Serpentine belt explosion and electrical connector damage

It's a 2017 I bought used in 2020. It came from the east coast originally. I went through and cleaned off a lot of minor surface rusted and then sealed everything (including the inside of the frame before their was a "recall" to fix that). The hose clamps and a few of the smaller bolts looked the worst and didn't improve with rust converter, but none were structurally damaged.

 

Unless it was one of the flood damaged vehicles we've had here that sat in water for a time, usually they don't get that ugly unless someone abused the truck. I take it, you bought the truck in a private sale. No respectable dealer would send it out like that.

 

Makes me wonder if you have a bad bearing in the tensioner or a guide. Looks like part of the belt melted into the belt grooves.

 

It doesn't look "that" bad

 

Totally different reason, but this guy yesterday had an overheat situation where his temperature guage still read normal. Maybe Toyota put the sensor in a place that if there is little or no coolant, the sensor doesn't have anything to measure?

 

my belt shredded at about 80k miles

 

Probably your best bet for the alternator connector is an alternator repair shop. I have in the past bought some putting a different engine in a jeep.

 

I've seen a few of the tacoma's here in new england that are 4-5 years old at dealers. They look nothing like that. Their still pretty clean in the engine bay, except for the engine surfaces being a bit tarnished, just not shiny new.

 

It only had 21,000 miles on it. I’m happy to change it out earlier than recommended but it’s not like I was rocking a belt with 80,000 miles on it

Same here, had it off about a month ago and it looked solid. Maybe @Spacecoast is right, I’m wondering if I should be looking at pulleys and bearings now.

 

These 3.5's are dropping like flies!!!

 

I know when the dealer did my timing belt replacement after every 90k miles on my gen1 tundra 4.7, they replaced the water pump, serpentine belt, and tensioner as a kit.

 

OE Toyota belts are generally very tough across all models. I am curious if these failures are 'normal' statistics within the production numbers or something else. Mine looks new at 50K miles but I don't off road or drive through deep water, etc.

 

Here we go

 

Yeah I should probably look into that, it’s been on my list but it sounds like I should bump it up a few spots.

We’ll mine is a 4.0 so, his assumptions are skewed

 

My original at 100-110K still looked okay but it was September so I figured better to just do it before I have to versus choose to, because I don't want to work on the truck outside in winter here.

 

I did mine today, at 97,000 miles. Still had plenty of life life left.