Hi all. Had a little misfortune this evening. Went to run some errands this evening and after starting normally, when I went to pull away I didn't have any power assist in the steering. I immediately stopped and popped the hood. Serpentine belt was not on the pulleys. Must have happened on start-up as everything was fine when I parked it yesterday.

My first thought was that it snapped and I hoped it didn't tear anything up too badly. When I tried to pull the belt out, it wasn't snapped or visually damaged. This worried me even more as now I have to figure out what made it jump off!!!! Anybody heard of the belt doing this before??

Will look at it again tomorrow in the day light, but naturally since it's Sunday, nothing in my little town will be open for me to get a belt.

Was also hoping someone could post the service manual pages for me for both belts. Upon inspection, the AC belt is looking a little suspect. Might as well replace both at the same time.

The main belt is no problem, but I don't know about the AC belt.

My car is a '99 A4 Coupe w/Z51 package.

Thanks in advance,
DSTURBD

 

A/C belt is best changed from underneath.Check your idler and tensioner pullies on the main belt.My idler had a bad bearing that let the belt work it's way off!

 

Professor,
Go start car, ok briefly w/ no belt, and check trueness/wobble of crank pulley. Their famous for separating. If wobble present, there is the root cause of your problem. If it appears to be normal, install belt and re-examine with relation to the other adjacent pulleys (alignment). Do this before a/c belt install cause you'll be pulling it off again to replace your balancer.
GL

 

and good luck with fixing the car.

 

Thanks for the replies, guys!! I sure hope that between the two, it is the idler and not the balancer. Yeah, I know, hope in one hand and.............

Oh well, the really frustrating part of this is that this past week was our spring break and I would have had the whole time to deal with this, had it happened last Saturday instead of this one!!!!!!! Not a good sign, huh?!?!?!?

Thanks again guys!!

DSTURBD

 

And I thought Murphy's Law only applied to me Keep us updated on your fix.

 

Hey all!

A bit of an interim update here. Went out this morning and checked everything out in much better light.

Good news:
Absolutely zero wobble or run-out in the balancer or any of the pulleys which didn't surprise me as I've had no chirping noises or anything. After checking things out, I put the belt back on to check further for problems. It fired up just fine with no re-occurrance of the belt jumping off. Re-checked all pulleys and the balancer and again, zero run-out or indication of a problem that would cause it to throw the belt. Shut it off and re-started a few times......no problem. Went out and drove it around quite a bit with no problems or noises. So, other than obvious age and normal wear on the belt, I cannot find any problems.

After searching and checking out the procedures for replacing the balancer last night, you have no idea how happy I was to see zero wobble at the balancer!!!! (I seem to remember my other '99 having some wobble in it.)

Bad news:
No clue what caused the problem, but after years in the automotive hobby (some of those professionally), I do not believe in one-time anomolies!!!!! Something caused this to happen even if it is just a soft and stretched belt!!!

Plan of action:
In the morning, I will go try to get a Goodyear Gatorback belt for it. I had an appointment to get an oil and filter change in the morning, so I will get that done and then come straight home and install the new belt.

As previously stated, I haven't and still don't have any belt-related noises, so I will keep a close eye on the new belt and see how things progress.

On another topic, my car doesn't have the belt routing sticker on the left inner fender well, it has one showing the top of the engine/manifold and a couple of small square ones that say "Campaign Completed". As I was busy with the belt, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them, but assumed that they refer to recalls such as column lock, etc. Anybody know of any way I can find out for sure? I know my car does not have the locking plate behind the steering wheel as it will turn anytime. Weren't there two different campaigns on the column lock issue?

Thanks for reading this and all the help guys!!!!!

DSTURBD