Oil leak & shredded belt.

Evidently the serpantine belt on my brand new Tacoma was either mis-aligned at assembly or jumped out of alignment. Anyhow, Friday evening it started to shred on the way home. Part of the cord from one rib wound around the crankshaft snout and cut up the front main seal. I took it in Monday, and it was leaking pretty badly.

The truck had only 525 miles on it.

I got it back today, with a new belt and a new seal, and a pronouncement that the seal surface on the hub was OK. But there was no mention whether they changed the oil, and that kinda bothers me. Polyester chord covered with bits of dirty rubber got sucked in past the seal. I assume some of it got into the front cover, and washed down into the sump.

Also I expected that to get the H.B. pulley off that the radiator would have to come out. Evidently that isn't so? It wasn't mentioned in the mechanic's notes. I've never torn down a Tacoma myself.

Finally, no mention was made of checking the pulley alignment, which would be an issue to me if a car was trashing the belt.

So far I haven't looked under the hood, but I will tomorrow in the clear light of day, and at that point I'll throw the evil eye on everything & see what's what.

 

The seal is way above the oil level, right? Not much is gonna run out.

What I think is stupid is they didn't try to flush out any dirt. This engine is new and tight, and the tiniest speck of crud could score up things.

 

I didn't mean it quite that way. If I did the job, I think I'd flush the dirt down into the pan and then drain the oil. I wouldn't drain it then flush dirt into the empty pan.

Anyhow, I didn't think they did because I read the typed notes Plus the mech's hand written notes. The hand written notes were quite extensive. neither mentions the oil. On the parts bill they mention a seal and belt, but no oil, & no oil plug gasket.