I hope somebody can give me some assistance. A lttle over a week ago there was a strange rythmic clicking sound from under the hood of my 1999 Dodge 2500 CTD. It has about 75K on it. Further investigation revealed that the Serpentine Belt had jumped out of position working itself back toward the engine and was slowly destroying itself against the brackets. (Note: This belt was replaced only about 3 months ago at the local Dodge dealer. They indicated my belt was fraying. Looking back on it I wonder if the old belt was out of line at that is why it was fraying). Anyway, the rythmic clicking was the belt rubbing the brackets as it spun.

I took my truck to an old time mechanic - a mechanic that really knows how to research and fix vehicles. Not just a parts replacer.

He put a new belt on and started the truck - it immediately jumped back one groove. He proceeded to check the alignment all along the way to make sure there was nothing obviously wrong. He has check this several times since then. He said nothing looked out of line. He checked the a/c clutch to see if that had worn - since the belt seemed to jump out of line there. He said that it looked okay and there was no sign of leakage (I live on a dirt road and he felt leaking oil would be very evident with the dust). He obtained a new pully for the idler (tensioner?) assembly and installed that. Apparently these tend to go bad. No good the belt jumped back immediately. He noted there was a little play in the idler assembly so we replace the entire ssembly. If anything the new assembly seems to have made the problem worse. He has been over the truck/under the truck looking for a cause and swears he sees nothing out of line and the truck seems to be running fine - except for the belt jumping back.

So that is were I am at. The truck is basically unusable and I am getting kind of frustrated since I need the truck. My mechanic says he normally does not give up but that this has him totally stumped. He said it there maybe something with the harmonic balancer that could cause this - but he has looked at it and sees no indication of a problem. I guess it is spinning true to the eye. He already informed me that he was not interested in a replacing the harmonic balancer that job and the truck would need to go elsewhere. He said maybe the Cummins warranty would cover it.

This is a semi-retired old time mechanic that has a lot of experience and now works out of his house who has a great reputation. I trust his advice without question and it really concerns me that he is stumped on this. If anyone has had a similar experience/problem or knows what could cause this to happen I sure would appreciate your help. Thanks and have a great Thanksgiving.

 

First off Welcome to the site!
Hopefully someone will have a better idea than I but one thing that strikes me as odd is that the replacement belt went 3 months before jumping the pulley. From any of my experiences with belts jumping the problem has always traced its way back to a bearing going south ie: Idler pulley, Alt etc. I dont think you will have any warrenty on a 99 left? I wish I could help more.

 

Just recently my father-in-law had the same problem with his 92. The belt was tracking like a snake. His fan bearing was junk, got the bearing from Carquest for 125 bucks.

 

Thanks for the welcome. I have been reading this sight for over a year but just never had occasion to post anything. There is alot of information here.

As I said we replaced the idler pulley and then the idler assembly but that did not solve the issue. Put the old ones back on.

I think my mechanic has already considered the bad bearing issue. I am no mechanic and consider myself lucky to have a good one locally to me. If it is a bad bearing in the fan or alternator, etc. how does one know that the bearing is bad and that is what needs replaced?

So far it does not seem like anyone has indicated that they think it could be the harmonic balancer. As I said my local mechanic indicated that there has been some issues with the harmonic balanacer in these trucks (he has a friend at the dealer) and that maybe that is the problem. But from the replies here it does not seem like the harmonic balancer is the issue. Has there been problems with the harmonic balancer in the 99 CTDs?

The harmonic balancer sounds like an expensive repair and I don't want to spend a bunch of $ replacing it only to find out the problem is not fixed.

Please keep the help coming!!

 

My guess is it's not the harmonic balancer. An idler pulley was mentioned several times, and I'm thinking they mean the tensioner assembly. That's your best bet, even if you've already bought a new one. The one on my first gen got worn and caused the belt to start shredding from the edge where it was rubbing. Incidentally, when I replaced the belt and tensioner, the familiar chirp at shutoff went away. You can usually check the condition of a bearing on an accessory such as the water pump or alternator by taking the belt off and spinning the pulley by hand. If the pulley spins freely with no noticeable grit and there is no noticeable side to side play or end play, the bearings are probably still good. After the tensioner, my next guess would be the water pump. If you replace it, put a little o-ring lube on the o-ring before bolting it on. Vaseline works ok if you don't have any o-ring lube. After that, the fan pulley as mentioned earlier. Any alignment issues you may have are the result of worn parts, since it was working fine before, so don't think you need to start adding shims somewhere.

 

Start with the alternator bearing. I had 4 belts replaced within the first 10K miles. It turned out to be the alternator bearing. It was seized and putting additional stress on the belt causing it to slip ever so slightly and fray from contacting the brackets. I've had the replacement alternator on for about 170K now and haven't had a belt problem at all.

 

Tensioner is the most likely prob.

 

I've been hoping someone would need the answer to this one. Returning from our first trip out west, just barely 80k on odometer. I was about 400 miles from home and stopped for fuel - just like every other fuel stop I'd lift the hood and take a look while fueling as I just purchased with 75k and was still learning the truck. All looked fine until I heard a kind of chirping. To the point, the belt had climbed off the A/C pully towards the engine by one notch and had started to be shread against one of the bolts near the compressor pully. Installed spare and went on my way. Got home and checked the belt had crawled again. One new tensioner, new belt, new idler pully ($$$) later same thing. I took a straight edge and checked the alignment from the face of the A/C to idler and other pully, sure enough the idler was off a tad. Since it was the last pully to touch the belt before the A/C it surely made sence to me what was happening - the belt was following the direction of the idler. My fix was to loosen the idler tensioner bracket bolt and try fitting feeler gauges between the bracket and block (I think that's what it tightens to) below the bolt, I settled on an 0.020" piece and tightened the bolt - presto! It's been that way ever since and I now have 144k - worked for me, it's worth a shot and a real cheap fix if it works for you. Don't ask what caused this to happen as I only know what fixed it and that's all I need to know - it's worked for over 60,000 miles so as far as I'm concerned - done deal - hope it works for you. Please report back.

 

I talked to my mechanic about your theory. He thought it was a very good match for my trucks issues - virtually exact and at about the same mileage. His question was did you put the shims all the way under the tensioner or did you just put them on one side. I took your solution as that you just shimmed out one side to correct he out of line situation. If you put a shim completely under you just move the tensioner out by 20,000s. Please provide a little more details on your fix, e.g. how you place the shims. Thanks so much for the help.

 

twhman was this clicking heard at idle or under acceleration? The reason im asking is that im chasing a noise that i can't locate and my belt is tring to track off the front of the ac pulley and just wondering when you heard this noise.

 

Sorry twhman - I responded to your PM. For the rest I placed the shim under, on the bottom, down side, of the bolt - between the tensioner and it's mounting surface. This provided the slight angle to redirect the flow of the belt away from the rear of the A/C pully. In the case of "plows" belt crawling, his is going towards the front of the A/C pully. MEaning towards the radiator, yes? If this is the case then I "think" I would try placing whatever thickness of feeler gage on top of the bolt between tensioner and mounting surface - that should redirect the flow of the belt towards the back of the pully. Remember the thicker the spacer the more angle the more it will move the belt either way. Also, don't forget this worked for me "after" I replaced the tensioner with a "Cummings" part. So, I'm not saying it will or will not work if you replace the tensioner first. I'm just posting the "only" thing what worked for me. Good luck.

 

Eek, he said Cummings.

 

Yep I sure did, caus that's what I'd rather bedoin than strokin.