How to Fix a Broken Serpentine Belt? Essential Tips

Nowadays, most cars embark on a single serpentine belt (also known as an s-belt) that drives all of the car engine’s accessories, including the water pump, compressor, and alternator, and needs to alternate when it breaks.

Your car will produce overheating if you are driving with a broken or damaged serpentine belt, which can lead to the defeat of other critical elements of the car like the alternator, air conditioning, or power steering.

That’s why we need to know how to fix a broken serpentine belt. In this article, I will provide you with the concept of an easily broken serpentine belt solution. To know more, let’s jump right in.

How to Fix a Serpentine Belt

Serpentine belts are aware of or known to last for a long time. However, if this belt breaks, your Car engine will come to a full stop. In this situation, the only way is to replace or alternate the serpentine belt.

1. Placing of the belt

Each and every vehicle has its own serpentine belt path. To create a note of where the belt needs to be placed, follow these steps :

• The mechanic may receive a few photos or draw or paint a diagram of how the aged belt coils around various pulleys, such as the idler and belt tensioner.
• The mechanic can give eyes for the belt subduing in the driver’s manual if you already have a loose belt that’s out of place.

2. Check out the tensioner

The mechanic will overlook the belt tensioner for any excessive vibration or quake before taking aside the worn serpentine belt. The tensioner pulley is acceptable for keeping the belt fixed around the engine accessory pulleys.

A completely working tensioner should vibrate or quake slightly. A properly tensioned belt should also run nicely and without apparent, tangible vibration around the tensioner.

It’s a symbol of a malfunctioning belt tensioner if the pulley vibrates dangerously, the belt vibrates, or the tensioner parts move more than 14 inches.

3. Loosening and unthreading the belt

Insert or put the serpentine belt tool into the 12-inch or 38-inch drive stigma, which is in square shape. If you don’t have permission to use a serpentine belt tool, a long-handled ratchet wheel or breaker bar with several sockets may run.

• Also, you can use a socket to vanish the hex-shaped nut from the pulley. The tensioner body will then be slowly, slightly turned as far as it can go by the mechanic.
• The belt tension will be Freed as a result of this action. After vanishing the aged belt from any smooth pulley, the mechanic will exempt the tensioner.

4. Identify the damage to the belt

The mechanic will give the performance visual measurements for any symbols of damage or break after vanishing the  Previous old belt. They’ll be on the lookout for any symbols of differentiation around the margins. A misaligned or not having in a position, the serpentine belt is also reported by separated belt grooves or ribs.

• If your car’s drive belt has several fractures or cracks within an inch of each other or more than four fractures per inch on one single rib, you’ll have to replace it.
• The absence of lumps from the belt ribs, shredded fan belt fabric, glazing on the belt’s rear, and soil between the belt teeth or ribs are all symbols of a defective and damaged serpentine belt.

5. Installing New One

Using a belt replacement instrument, the new belt is around the pulley path.

• The mechanic will weigh the belt and cover it around the crankshaft pulley while rotating the tensioner body.
• Then next, cover the belt around any additional grooved pulley, confirming that it follows the belt diagram’s original course.
• The serpentine belt alternation will be finished by sliding the belt onto a non-grooved pulley.
• Your mechanic will now release the tensioner gradually.
• And then start your car and let it run for a minute to ensure that the new serpentine belt is working correctly.

By following these steps, we will now be able to know the fixing method of a broken serpentine belt.

FAQs

Question: What causes a belt to break on a car?

Answer: Serpentine belts can break down in various ways. This is basically severely caused by a worn belt or an issue with one of the belt’s auxiliary elements. The serpentine belt will also break if a bearing in a pulley being pushed by it fails.

Question: Can you drive a car without a belt?

Answer: You must never drive a car without a serpentine belt since it is accountable for transporting antifreeze to critical engine elements. The power steering pump that produces hydraulic pressure will no longer work without the serpentine belt.

Question: How long will a car go with a broken serpentine belt?

Answer: The answer has a few changeable things, but it should take between 20 and 90 minutes to finish. On a hot summer day, your engine can get speedily overheated if the coolant is not poured through the radiator.

When the engine temperature increases above a safe level in many modern cars, the engine light will illuminate. To protect the engine, it may even put the car into limp mode. If it’s cold outdoors and the battery is new, you might be capable of driving for up to 90 minutes before it fails. You won’t be capable of utilizing fans, headlights, or any other criteria that swallow a lot of power.

Your power of the car steering will not even work at all, making turning the wheel extremely problematic. You should be capable of driving it to a safe location where it can be towed or fixed. To eliminate further damage, remove the belt if it is snapped and dangling in the engine compartment before moving the car.

Question: Is it expensive to replace the belt?

Answer: Basically, Most amateur technicians are well able to replace a serpentine belt. A new serpentine belt gathering, a set of wrenches, and potentially jack stands or a lift will be a must wanted. In roughly 15 minutes, a skilled technician can replace the belt.

At home, it could take an hour. Expect to cost between $100 and $200 if you have your local repair store to alternate the old serpentine belt.

Final Words

Throughout this article, we have learned an easy method of serpentine belt fixing mechanism. This article helps one to fix their own car’s broken serpentine belt easily by following those steps.

Also Check:

1. How long can a car run without a serpentine belt?

2. How to Stretch a Belt Over a Pulley?

3. How to Use Stretch Belt Tool?