So I got stuck on my last trip because the power steering pulley came off. I had it fixed while on the road and they replaced the pulley. Unfortunately I didn't have to many options.

Today I noticed that the tensioner pulley and the lower pulley are not aligned to the rest. The belt is moving out 1 rib. Can this be adjusted? But the decoupler pulley doesn't seem to be making noise. Is there any adjustment on the tensioner pulley?

 

Okay, so that engine compartment is a mess. Lots of rust and corrosion. Remove all of the belts/hoses, see what needs to be replaced and and go from there.

 

Almost looks like you could just push the tensioner toward the center of the engine( un-tension it) and put the belt back on.

 

If the Crank Pulley is pulling the Belt forward off of that Tensioner consistently and the Belt is staying on the Crank Pulley completely it's a good possibility that it's about to come apart.

I'd be looking at that really close..

 

So the car has been sitting for a long time and what I am doing is taking each thing and cleaning it and replacing anything that is needed. Plus it just came off a long drive and because I broke down unfortunately I got caught in some snow. So it's still a mess and lot of that might be salt from the other day. That is today's project to clean everything.

When they did the power steering pulley, they did a full flush and check on the cooling system, the ABS system and brake lines, and power steering pump and lines. As far as the belt goes I never had this issue until they replaced the power steering pulley. It has never done this before. If I put the belt back on as soon as I start the car it moves to the outside edge of the tensioner. I can't understand what they did as far as replacing the power steering pulley. The car was running while they checked everything before they gave it back to me so I'm not exactly sure how the hell they missed this. The decoupler on the alternator used to make noise, and it was suggested by another member on the forum that it was alignment. Now the sound seems to be gone. But the other side is out of alignment.

Is there any horizontal adjustment on that tensioner pulley? How do you align everything? The only thing I have ever had to do was change the belts which I did pretty frequently.

 

If the Power Steering Pulley was the only thing changed then the put the wrong one on.

There are all kinds of them out there shaped differently. Flat, beveled, etc. The wrong one was put on that car.

 

This is the pully they replaced it with. It pulls up as OEM replacement.

ACDelco Power Steering Pulleys 12559890

 

If its the correct one then it's not pressed on all the way. Something is pulling the Belt outward.

How does the Belt look on the Water Pump?

 

Well it's a little hard to see but the belt is sitting farther out than it originally was. What I don't understand is the sound coming out of the decoupler pulley is gone so I can only assume it was the power steering that was causing it. But as of now that belt is definitely farther out. My guess is it needs to be pressed on more. The face of the pullies are all on the same plane And that's probably how they aligned it rather than by the slots on the pulley.

 

Yup that PS Pulley isn't on all the way. Take it to whoever did it and make them do it right.

 

Thanks...now I've got to figure it out with AAA. Being the place that did it is 6 hours away. They said that they had to remove the radiator and abs to get that on. I guess I've got to have it towed AGAIN to a local AAA Shop.

You think they would have seen it when it was running. I guess I got lucky again because I drove that home..
​

 

Yup it's definitely in a tight spot. Regardless they need to do it right.

 

would it be cheaper to have a local shop do it?? Dont know how much AAA will charge you. If its a wash or close to towing fees.

 

Well it was a AAA Certified shop that fixed it when I got stuck. I was 250 miles from home. So now I have to take it to a AAA Certified shop here so they honor the warranty. They would have cover everything including this tow. Closest certified shop is 25 mi away so they're going to have to do something.

 

The center of your balancer should not be sticking out past the outer ring. They should be flush with each other. Your balancer is bad. Quit worrying about the PS pulley.

It must be completely separated to do this too, so you can't drive it because it either moves forward and damages to rack or backwards and damages the front of the engine.

 

Not even that, look where the Belt is even on the Balancer. It should be in the middle of it not on the forward Lip of it.

Belt isn't even installed correctly. I'm just now seeing it because the image loaded in full detail.

I know I'm not the only one seeing it, the whole forward most rib of the Belt is wore off from it being in the wrong spot. Hell you can see that looking at the inside of the Belt when it's wrapped around the Tensioner, should be a dead giveaway something is off. Time for a new Belt and it to be installed correctly.

That's what happens when kids working in a garage work on your cars.

 

Saw the belt, but just didn't care. The balancer IS the problem. When it walks back and forth it can cause the belt to jump grooves..

Forget worrying about the PS pulley "not installed right" or the belt being off one groove. PS pulley is probably fine and the belt will be fixed when you install a new one after the balancer replacement.

 

Why I mentioned it in my first post wouldn't hurt to look at it really close. I see the rubber sticking out but yeah need to get down there and take a look at it.

 

OEM C5 balancers suck for durability. Just sayin'

 

Thanks everyone...that belt was new when I left home. I installed it which I had done many times before no issues. Believe me if I didn't get stuck and had no option I would handle all this myself. I have no idea why but when these guys did the repair they did not replace the belt. I just needed to get myself home to where I could deal with it.

I do have a chirping noise in there which I thought was the decoupler pulley, but after listening to everyone it sounds like it's the HB.

2 QQ:
I have watched some videos on changing the HB out. Just an opinion how hard is this job to do? I consider myself pretty good with engines and doing repairs. I pretty much work on every car I own. Just watching some of the steps to do this I've seen a couple things I probably haven't had my hands in yet. How hard is this to do.

Also should I just change the water pump while I'm in there? Think it is still the original pump.