Rodeo Joe
Elite Bostonian
- Joined
- August 29, 2003
- Messages
- 428
- Reaction score
- 1
- City, State
- Frankin, MA
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 1997 XLT
Last Friday night I noticed a new noise from under the hood. It went away after the truck warmed up, so I figured the cold weather had something to with it.
Then I saw this thread that Aldive posted about belt tensioners and started thinking this might be my problem. I was planning on changing the pulleys today at my friends shop, he works at a dealer.
Well everything changed at 12:15 this morning on the way home from work! I'm about 10 minutes away from home when the battery light goes on, dash and headlights dim, I have no power steering and the temp. gauge soars! I pull over and find the idler pulley sitting by the t-stat housing, the bearings were shot and the bolt had backed itself out! When it cooled down I drove down the street to a parking lot and called the wife for a ride, not a good idea at that time of the morning!
I picked up the new tensioner and pulley this morning at the dealer and had them on in about 15 minutes. On the drive home I was getting a violent shaking in the front end while steering, now WTF! I called the dealer and talked with a tech and he explained to me that when something like this happens, an air pocket can develop in the PS system and needs to be bled.
So everything's nice now, lesson learned. Truck has a little over 113K on it and from what I've read here, they should be done as preventive maintainece after 100K.
Joe
Then I saw this thread that Aldive posted about belt tensioners and started thinking this might be my problem. I was planning on changing the pulleys today at my friends shop, he works at a dealer.
Well everything changed at 12:15 this morning on the way home from work! I'm about 10 minutes away from home when the battery light goes on, dash and headlights dim, I have no power steering and the temp. gauge soars! I pull over and find the idler pulley sitting by the t-stat housing, the bearings were shot and the bolt had backed itself out! When it cooled down I drove down the street to a parking lot and called the wife for a ride, not a good idea at that time of the morning!
I picked up the new tensioner and pulley this morning at the dealer and had them on in about 15 minutes. On the drive home I was getting a violent shaking in the front end while steering, now WTF! I called the dealer and talked with a tech and he explained to me that when something like this happens, an air pocket can develop in the PS system and needs to be bled.
So everything's nice now, lesson learned. Truck has a little over 113K on it and from what I've read here, they should be done as preventive maintainece after 100K.
Joe
Luckily we were on our way back from Walmart only a mile from the house instread of on the way down to Sacramento like we were going to be just after we went home!
