Well, last thursday was, well, a very exciting evening. I was driving home, heard a thunk under the hood, and lost all power steering, battery light came on, and lights began to dim. So, obvious that the serpentine belt broke. My question is this: actually, the belt is fine. totally fine. I inspected it and there's only a small notch on the side. Nothing to worry about. Therefore, it's most likely the tensioner, correct? I don't plan on spending almost $100 on a tensioner, replace it myself, only to find out that the belt slipped off for some other reason. Any ideas?

Oh, and while the serpentine belt remained intact, the supercharger belt broke! just my luck, huh? There's another $40!

Want to know the kicker? I've had more problems with my daily driver than my 500HP Twin turbo! I track that car all day, and no probs whatsoever. I drive this car to work, and it's been a nightmare with repairs.

Thanks for the help with the newbie.

Damon

PS- if anyone has a page on installing the tensioner, i'd be appreciative of the assistance.

well my guess is that the supercharger belt broke, and then got tangled in the accessory belt and threw it off a pulley.

Also, you say the car is problematic. No offense implied here, but I bet the supercharger belt could have been inspected before it broke. it was probably really cracked. Any car will be problematic if you ignore it. I work on my car almost every weekend, and it has only let me down once so far. I do lots of preventative maintenance, and if you fix problems when they are small, they tend not to turn into bigger things. Read this forum and other forums, and you will learn lots about these cars. You are on the right track, and I hope your car will be better for you in the future.

Steve

Unfortunately, there's been several repairs done to the car prior to this happening. The belts were not 10Kmiles old. The alternator is 5K old. I'm guessing, since I took a look at things tonight, that satan (the dealer) really didn't install the alternator correctly. In fact, 1 bolt is stripped, the front bracket was not screwed on (missing one bolt) and there were numerous other problems in there. I'm not a happy camper with them.

Does anyone have a diagram of the serpentine belt routing and supercharger belt routing? That would be a great help.

Thanks
Damon
damon_rachell@hotmail.com