In January, I had the alternator, belt tensioner, and & belt replaced. A few weeks ago, I heard a strange noise under the hood. Turned out to be the belt starting to shred; the garage replaced it at no charge. Today, I heard the noise again and the new belt is starting to shred also. Any thoughts at all before I take it back.

 

My experience with this is the replacement belt did not have the correct gruve spacing. very close but not correct.
Or the alternator pulley gruve spacing in not correct.
Either one will tear up a belt in short order.
Another in not setting the belt on one pulley, to set in all gruves leaving the side hanging over the edge.

 

Thanks for the info. I double checked everything again; even crawled under the truck. Noticed that the belt is one groove too far back on the crankshaft; makes sense since the belt is starting to shred on the back edge. Hope that's the only cause in that the mechanic just didn't get it aligned right.

 

It seems like odds are against your garage making the same mistake twice?

 

Sounds like he has the alternator on wrong or spaced wrong. Also, maybe the wrong alternator.

The belt isn't running true from pulley to pulley. Something is out of alignment.

 

Get a straight edge and start checking your pulley alignment. Check all the pulleys and make sure there's no excessive end play. I had a Town Car before with a FUBAR'ed power steering pump that'd let the pulley flop around about approx 3/8", even though the car never lost power steering. Killed belts like no one's business.

 

You may want to make sure the new alternator pully doesn't have the wrong number of grooves on it. I think Ford went from 8 to 6 grooves (or vise versa) on thier pulleys/belts in 2002.

Good luck

 

Check the alignment of the tensioner pulley. You said they had replaced it, and I'll bet they installed it incorrectly.

 

Also check your pulley surfaces to make sure there are no burred spots that could be causing the belts to shred.

 

Took it to the shop this morning. The mechanic did a visual and wandered about the pulley on the alternator. I told them while they were at it to go ahead and replace the idler pulley (since it was still the original). They discovered the problem was that the harmonic balancer had slid forward slightly; basically the width of a grove. They ordered a new one from Carquest and it will be in tomorrow.