95 Winstar Serpentine Belt Problem

[copdills]

Hello :

I need a little help, my old belt on my winstar broke, its a 3.8 liter engine I replaced it and now it keeps jumping off , the tensioner does make the belt look alittle off to the left from the front of the engine looking at the alingment of the belt, but the tensioner looks OK , in the back of my mind I think the tensioner is the problem, this is a high mileage van and I don't think anything has been replaced on it, any help would be most appreciated

Thank you very much
Randy Dills

[tomj76]

Check to make sure the tensioner moves freely over the full range and remains "in the plane" of the other pulleys. When my tensioner wore out it was visibly out of line with other pulleys and it did not move over the full range.

[copdills]

thanks tomj76 I will check this out

[wiswind]

You can buy the whole tensioner unit or just the pulley.
I replaced the pulley on mine on my '96 within the past year.......I needed to remove the whole tensioner unit in order to get the bolt out of the pulley.
It took some serious "convincing" to get the pulley bolt to come loose.
I do know that it is kind of a optical illusion looking at the tensioner.....the unibody "frame" member kind of comes in at a angle as compared to the tensioner.

I was able to feel a slight roughness when spinning the pulley.....the bearings were shot.
It can be hard to tell.......as sometimes it is just fine until it is "loaded" with the tension of the belt on it.
Also......I had the "idler" pulley bearing go on mine.......and it was REALLY hard to tell.
It felt just fine spinning by hand.....and only made a noise above a certain RPM, which was very slightly above idle speed.
In short.....the bearings in the tensioner pulley and in the idler pulley can go bad......LOTS of work to break the bolts free.......they ARE the standard.....
counter clockwise to loosten.

[copdills]

Thank you Sir: the bearing dosen't feel rough and it dosen't make any noise it does look as if it is in an angle from thr rest of the pulleys, it just keeps jumping off, my son loosened the alternator a little , could it be that even with the tensioner tighting the belt it is still too loose ,causing it to jump off

Thanks Randy