Chris Kouba
Supporter
Anyone ever have a situation where your pulley heats up ridiculously hot?
Upon running out of electrons one evening (got a jump, drove home), I tightened up the belt the next day because it was loose. I started up the motor to check the output and volts went right back to where they should be. To confirm it wasn't too tight, I grabbed the belt and flexed it and it seemed in range (~1/2", right?) but I also bumped into the alternator pulley and almost burned my hand it was so hot. This was after only running it at idle for a few seconds and a few gentle blips of the throttle, maybe 3k tops, and then shut down. 10 seconds tops...
I figured it was a bad bearing or an internal mechanical issue and the parts guys swapped me out another one, along with a new belt (the old one was heavily glazed). Put it all together but left the belt extremely loose but still tight enough to spin, and the exact same thing happened within seconds.
I called a friend today and he recommended pulling the wire off and seeing if it was something with a back EMF from the battery, so that's on the list of things to do.
The specs are single wire Powermaster alternator. It has a large wire leading from the output post to a 50A circuit breaker which is wired to the + post on the battery. It's a V-belt and the pulley is chromed if that makes a difference.
The interesting thing is that it had run flawlessly until recently, but nothing has changed on the motor. I figured it had to be the specific alternator but the replacements (belt and alt) doing the same thing has me puzzled. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Chris
Upon running out of electrons one evening (got a jump, drove home), I tightened up the belt the next day because it was loose. I started up the motor to check the output and volts went right back to where they should be. To confirm it wasn't too tight, I grabbed the belt and flexed it and it seemed in range (~1/2", right?) but I also bumped into the alternator pulley and almost burned my hand it was so hot. This was after only running it at idle for a few seconds and a few gentle blips of the throttle, maybe 3k tops, and then shut down. 10 seconds tops...
I figured it was a bad bearing or an internal mechanical issue and the parts guys swapped me out another one, along with a new belt (the old one was heavily glazed). Put it all together but left the belt extremely loose but still tight enough to spin, and the exact same thing happened within seconds.
I called a friend today and he recommended pulling the wire off and seeing if it was something with a back EMF from the battery, so that's on the list of things to do.
The specs are single wire Powermaster alternator. It has a large wire leading from the output post to a 50A circuit breaker which is wired to the + post on the battery. It's a V-belt and the pulley is chromed if that makes a difference.
The interesting thing is that it had run flawlessly until recently, but nothing has changed on the motor. I figured it had to be the specific alternator but the replacements (belt and alt) doing the same thing has me puzzled. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Chris