SimonH

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum

Couple of weeks back I noticed one of the drive belts at the front of the engine was misaligned by one groove. This meant it was rubbing on a plastic cover and had worn a groove in it (see picture)


First question, is it possible for a belt to jump teeth like this? The dealer suggested that this was the case, but the grooves on the pulley seem very deep and the belt was v.tight. I wondered if it had been like this from new (sept 00).
Secondly, the car's due it's 7500 service very soon, is it worth getting the belt changed? I plan to get them to change the cover but was wondering if the belt would've been damaged carving through the plastic.

Thanks.

CraigCH

I also had this on my car. Fortunately it didn't wear the cover but started to squeel a bit at idle. I reported this to the dealer at service time and they said that they had re-fitted and re-tensioned it. However the squeel came back so I decided to look at it myself. The belt was very easy to loosen without the cover in place ( It impressed me how well thought out these cars are!) With the belt moved to one side it was clear from the wear marks on the pulley that the belt had never been fitted properly e.g put on wrong when the air-con was fitted. That points to the dealer removing the wrongly fitted belt and then putting it back on incorrectly again!!! I simply moved it over the one groove it was out then re tensioned it back to where it was before. It has been fine ever since, it only took me about 20 mins in total. Needless to say I'm not sure if I will be going back to the same dealer if there mechanics can't spot something as simple as a badly fitted belt ( which they badly fitted in the first place I might add) how good are they at the rest of their job. Hope this helps.
Craig