I had my first expensive breakage this weekend. The tensioner broke in half. I have been in a diesel shop for 10 years now and never seen a tensioner break like this one. The pulley chunk took out the fan / radiator / shroud / belt.

I was racing my friends D-Max when it let loose. (I did win by the way )
He is pretty cool, he gave me his truck for a couple of days until I get the parts to fix mine.

I am trying to figure out how it broke the way it did. All the pulleys are good and aligned. CTD's really suck when you loose power steering and brakes. I could see it causing a bad accident if a belt broke and cars in front of you.

 

cool!!!.....did it break when the boost came on??? or at the end of the race??

 

I didnt really hear it happen I guess with two 7" strait stacks barking behind your head, you dont hear much.

I was going about 85+ when I had him by 4 truck lengths. I went to hit the brakes and I felt like ol' Al Bundy..... No brakes....No brakes!

We had a pack of diesels that night. 2 05 CTDs, 01 CTD, 02 CTD, and 01 D-Max we were all heading to the ski slope to ride tubes down the mountain.

 

Man i bet that was scary when you realized you had no brakes. What did you do to slow her down?

 

I was thinking about that the other day. If we loose or belt we loose our brakes. Sort of a risky situation.

Glad things worked out for you. Parts are fixable, lives aren't.

 

That is one of the nice things about a manual, it slows down pretty quick downshifting with the rpms over 2500.

I cannot believe they dont make these things with an emergency electric booster like the GMC 5500/6500's have. It could have been REALLY bad, no brakes or steering.

Try turning of your engine in neutral next time you are driving and see for yourself how bad it is.

 

my buddy called me from the dealer the other day and told me he had 2 come in with the same thing done

 

yep mine did yhe same thing, i was lucky got home from a fishing tip and let loose backing my trailer in. what a p.o.s it was like 260 bucks from the dealer and wasnt covered.

 

I hate dealers and their mark ups. Check this out:
3947574 Display part line detail
TENSIONER,BELT $56.31 $56.31 Show part supersession Delete part line

That is the cost of the tensioner from Cummins. How can the dealer mark up the part that much????

 

b/c they can, just like the heater block cords

 

Have you installed the over running alternator pulley..it eliminates belt chirp at shut down which causes belt wear and/or shred...it may have led to the pulley breaking as well ..Link to TSB:

http://dodgeram.info/tsb/2006/09-004-06.htm

 

I guess I will have to call and see what they want for one of those pulleys. I dont like the way the tensioner broke and the new one looks identical to the old one. I dont feel real good about it.

 

The Overrunning alternator pulley should have been a recall but Dodge would rather you and I drive a dangerous truck..

 

I thought someone awhile back ran into this, and found one at Napa that was much better quality...may be worth checking out.

FWIW, my tensioner broke as well, but was a result of the Jacob's vacuum pump locking up, and the belt melting till it snapped.

--Eric

 

yeah well i think my motor eat the lobes in the cam of the #4 cylinder! it has a pretty bad knock and the rockers seem like there are some problems.