wow. fan belt shredded wrapped around fan

so i am in the middle of a 12 hour road trip and i decided to lift the hood. didnt hear anything but this is what i found. not sure how long its been there.

anybody had this happen?

you can see the shreds around the fan, and the serpentine belt has a strip missing.

i will see if i can find a store to sell me the serp belt. i tugged at the shreds by hand quickly they feel very solidly wedged in there.

 

get a knife, cut the strands out of there.

Get a replacement belt and put it on, keep your old one as a spare.

 

Yes, mine did that same thing a few months ago out of the blue. Luckily I was on my way to a dealer to get my frame inspection done, so I had them replace the belt. I was told it was just old, and chose then to start to come apart. It went at about 120K.

 

I changed mine out years ago and didn't get it securely on all the pulleys and it shredded like this. Consequently the second time I changed the belt, years later, I found pieces of torn up belt wedged behind two of the pulleys. Cleaned it up and running great since.

 

went to an oil change place with a new belt i got a a partsource here. took a while but we got it unwound using wire cutters. the new belt proceeded to shred the INSIDE edge immediately. we stopped the engine and nipped ghe shredded piece off

the original shredded belt though was damaged on the outside edge.

so we were dumbfounded.

i am back on the road with another shredded serpentine belt. the previous shredded belt is in the back seat.

im guessing he either installed it uneven and that caused the insta-shred or ...i have a damaged pully. but damage on both sides of pulley?

 

had this happen, twice.

put the replacement on and it turned out the alternator seized and it was like shred zilla under there.

I'd say make sure everything still spins that should spin before you put another nice belt on there.

pliers, gloves, pull that skid plate off and go to town!

*if something is bound that shouldn't be, you might find a bunch of burned/melted belt on it from where the belt just rubbed till it snapped*

 

thnx tan. was the t totally seized or just added resistance? i have no signs of any systems failures (steering/ac/waterpump/alt) so im thinking its not a full on seizure.

ive pulled over twice to check if any further shredding has happened and none.

 

alternator was totally locked up. didn't move a bit.

maybe just an old belt. I'd say grab a new one before the rest of it goes.

breaker bar and a second set of eyes to line it up and you can get that new one in. No probbbb!

look REAL hard before you start the truck up. just to make sure you put it on right. =]

 

I just had this happen to a brand-new belt. Two days!
I actually thought your photo was the same one that I took. Looked the same.

anyway the belt slapped against an oil coolant hose enough times to wear a hole through it and cause a leak so keep that in mind if you start noticing a bit of coolant leaking from somewhere.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...elt-causes-coolant-leak.489649/#post-15067120

 

thank you for the heads up on this. When I installed the second one it Insta shredded. But only a tiny bit of it. I peeled it out and the truck has been running since then with the same belt that has a few pieces missing. So far it's fine.

ironically, I am driving the exact same 12 hour trip that I did the last time this happened I made this post. And here you come now again reminding me that I should be careful! Thank you and I'm glad you got yours sort it out. I will in fact inspect my oil cooler hose to see if they took any hits and is possibly compromised. No leaks as of now.

 

Damn!

 

171k on my OEM belt, maybe this will make me change it

 

I just installed the gates pulley set on the weekend, sans the tensioner pulley, and wow my truck drives and sounds like a new truck!!!

 

@VikingTrad3r
if you want to change the tensioner pully, without changing out the tensioner I believe its post 20 from the following thread:
part number 36174 from Napa (made by Gates)

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/lower-idler-pulley-replacement.63132/