Replacing belt and tension pulley every few months

Hello,

I'm looking for any suggestions on how to diagnose what I believe is deeper issue outside of my serpentine belt and tensioner pulley on my 06 Tacoma w/ 310,000 miles on it. I'll start out with a little history:

Feb23 - Belts begins squeaking along with noises from pulley. After a few weeks belt gets thrown and tensioner pulley is broken off and laying in my front skid plate. Replace pulley and belt

July23 - While on a road trip belt and pulley begin making noise. After a week or so while driving pulley seizes and throws belt off. Replace pulley and belt

October23 - Belt and pulley begin making noise. A couple weeks later pulley seizes and throws belt off. Replace both.

Currently, I have no issues. I'm no mechanic, but it seems like maybe something else connected on the belt is either providing friction, inconsistent idling, or uneven pressure across the tensioner pulley. Second, Maybe it is the tensioner itself?

The truck is old, but mostly runs very smooth. It has a rear main seal leak and has it for about 100,000 miles. I am losing a little oil between changes from this, but am I losing engine pressure they may cause inconsistent RPMs? In the last year, the truck has felt a little "slower" with RPMs through the gears. Could a poorly performing engine be causing this issue?

Again, I am no expert and try to do my research and can do minor jobs on my truck like replacing these parts. I would appreciate any help or suggestions - even if its to convince me to just go ahead and by that new tacoma Ive been looking at

Joe

 

Do you off road gravel often? I change mine once a year because of all the dust. I've tried every brand, nothing works.

 

Hey Bishop, I dont offroad with it much at all, but I do live in southern Arizona and the amount of dust in the environment is significant.

 

What are details on the engine? 2.7 or 4.0? Might help.

 

Have you replaced the whole tensioner assembly or just the pulley?

 

What brand belt and tensioner have you been using - and where are you getting them? Although I am NOT an 'everything needs to be OEM' guy, there are inferior brands and sources.

 

Hey, its the 4.0

 

Hey, Thats what I'm thinking is probably going to be my next step.

 

Hey, thanks for your reply. Im not exactly sure on the belt, but the pulley is the original that comes with the tensioner.

 

Like what tak1313 said, your problems could be bad new parts.

Give this a try. Stand on the side forward of the front tire. Look straight line of sight at the pulleys. Just inside of the outer lip where the outside edge of the belt rides. All of the pulleys should be very close to perfectly aligned.

Something else to look at. Every pulley the belt touches should spin without wobble. A wobbly pulley would cause a rapid loose tight belt and probably a noticeable bounce.

I’ve seen plastic get wrapped in a pulley, melt and fuse to the pulley and cause bouncing.

 

In February was that the original tensioner pulley and belt that went bad? Are getting oe parts from the dealer? Or are they parts house parts?

 

The same pulley is failing? You said it was the tensioner……how are the idler and water pump.

 

-is there proper belt tension
-is every pulley good
-are you using high quality parts
-is the belt clean (not being leaked on) and kept rotating the same way by marking it if removed

 

Look for a rust cloud on the face of all your pulleys, with the belt off try to spin everything by hand and/or with the engine running look from the side of the engine at the belt tracks straight around everything and nothing sticks out. If you have a manual have someone depress the clutch while looking to see if the crank walks a bit.

Have you done any other work under the hood lately? If your fan clutch super wobble or pretty solid?

my 96 f150 would throw a belt at high rpms. Someone at some point changed the power steering pump and didn't fully seat the pulley to the pump so that threw of the belt alignment and would eat pulleys and throw belts until I sorted out the power steering pump

 

This is confusing. In your original post, you indicated you replaced the pulley on Feb 23, July 23, and October 23. So the pulley can't be the "original that comes with the tensioner," or have you replaced the tensioner (with pulley) 3 times?

If you replaced JUST the pulley 3 times, what brand did you replace them with and where did you get them? Was there a spacer in the original that perhaps you did not use when replacing? If there was a spacer, without a proper spacer, there will be undue pressure on the inner race of the bearing when the pulley is torqued down.

 

You couldn't have replaced the tensioner pulley with oem pulley. Last I checked, Toyota does not sell the tensioner pulley separately. They only sell it with the tensioner assembly.

On Feb, when tensioner pulley first broke off, was it the bolt that broke? It’s reverse-threaded - where did you get a new bolt?