Advice and next steps?

[rackley]

My alternator belt is still pulling the same behavior, see "Alternator belt help please" thread for details.  

If I tighten down the alternator belt tight enough that it doesn't flap all over the place, the AC/Crank/Water Pump belt then flaps all over the place.  Unfortunately I can't tighten them both down hard enough that neither of them bounce.

Even if I could, there would still be lots of stress on those belts and they would certainly stretch anyways.  

Actions taken - replaced alternator with junkyard alt, replaced alternator pulley with brand new pulley.  Replaced tensioning pulley with brand new pulley.  Replaced belts about 10x (which adds up quick.)  

I was going to try to replace the AC compressor (not currently hooked up to anything because I ripped out the AC system) and/or the pulleys on the water pump and the crank.  However, the WP pulley costs $173.02 and the crank pulley costs $204.90.  So obviously those are no-go's.  What's left to do besides swear a lot and replace the belt every 20 minutes or trash the whole car?  I know if I take it to the dealership I'll get completely raped.

[srivett]

Does the bouncing go away when the glowplugs turn off?  My belts seem okay when the engine is at a quick idle.  My brother just adjusts his belt when it starts to squeel in the rain (no water cover) and I adjust mine whenever change belts (also too often but what can you do?)   Well, you could get a 1.9l serpentine belt system but I don't really know how much of it you need.  For about 250US I think I saw a kit with all the brackets, some pulleys, and a 95AMP alternator.  You still need to run the PS on a vbelt though. hehehehehe, what a bunch of crap eh?  VW appears to be determined to use all of its old designs as long as possible.  The bolt on drive shafts have been kicking around since the 60s.   :twisted:

Cheers, Steve

[rackley]

A serpentine conversion kit eh?  I did a search on here, vortex and google and couldn't turn anything up.  Any idea where you saw that?

[Rat407]

I saw it on E-bay, I was looking under VW diesel as a search. I was interested in it myself.

[fspGTD]

Can you post a picture of what your v-belt setup looks like?  I am not that familiar with the A/C setup.

[Northboundtrain]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but have you tried getting shorter belts?  Would that help the problem?

[srivett]

The kit I saw was somewhere on the following site.

http://zsimports.com/

Steve

[rackley]

Pics as requested...

I tore apart the whole setup today and did the following experiments:

Running with alternator belt completely removed resulted in the Crank/WP/AC flapping wildly when it wasn't ultra-tight.

Running with alternator belt remove AND PS belt removed resulted in the same.

While I was removing the PS belt I noticed that the PS belt actually had to go outward a bit to get to the crank pulley...so I examined some more and determined that my crank pulley is about 1-2mm too far out.  Now I don't know if this is actually the cause of my problems or not since the PS pump belt seemed just fine, but anything is possible.  

I have taken off my crank pulley (TD "harmonized"...i.e. heavy) as you can see in the pics.  I put on the crank pulleys (set of 2) from my old NA diesel and they are also too far out by about 1-2mm.  

I examined the WP and PS pulleys and they are perfectly aligned.  If one or the other was off, I would say that the accessory pulley was messed up, but since they both align with each other and they are both too far "in" (towards engine) by the same amount, and the AC compressor seems to line up with them as well, I'm forced to conclude it's the crank pulley.

I'll try to get it into a shop and see if they can  turn off about 1-2mm from the back of the pulley.  Shrug.  I'm still pretty much at a loss since I don't really believe that doing that will resolve it.

http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts2.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts3.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts4.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts5.jpg

[srivett]

That belt looks to be in horrible shape.  Have you tried a Gates, Continental or GoodYear belt?

Steve

[rackley]

That's the Crank/WP/AC belt.  It got in that shape after about 5 minutes of running.

I've tried six types.  Conti, NAPA, Gates, Goodyear, Goodyear Gatorbacks, and even OEM.  They all do the same thing.

[rackley]

Some people on the vortex suggested that the rust all over my pulleys might be the problem.  So I thoroughly wirebrushed them and used a "light rust/paint stripper" wheel to make them as smooth as they could get.  In the following movies/pics the belts are TIGHT.  

Video codec is Divx 6.0 and it can be grabbed free from:
http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXPlay.exe

Results:
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/vwbelts1.divx
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/vwbelts2.divx
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/vwbelts3.divx

http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-1.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-2.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-3.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-4.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-5.jpg
http://www.vocontrol.com/jetta/belts1-6.jpg

I did notice that the only thing that MIGHT be wrong is that my crank pulley is wobbling just the teeesnist amount.  You can almost see it in the 3rd video.

Any insights?

[srivett]

I'm sorry to hear you haven't gotten this sorted out yet.  I just read about your design of a WVO/biodiesel controller which is very interesting (I'm a recent Electrical Engineering grad) and I'd like to see you get more testing done.  

I don't think the wobbly main pulley is a major problem.  Mine wobbles a fair amount but it's pretty easy to deal with.  Just keep moving it around on that little dowl until it finds a spot it doesn't wobble at.  You don't even have to remove the pulley.  I see that there is still atleast one rusty pulley on the AC which could be a problem.  Rebuilders usually sandblast pulleys and then put on a layer of flat spray paint.  Polishing the pulleys will help the belt slip.  It also looks like you're still using the type of belt that you showed a picture of with the sides melted.  I would switch to a Gates or Contitech belt.  I've only seen that melting on a cheap belt I found in my brothers trunk.

Although the belts are flopping quite a bit it doesn't look horrible.  My brothers '89 with PS had loose belts that would flop like that.  They would squeel when wet too.  Are you still ruining belts?  I'm getting a whopping 10K km out of my belts due to flop but alteast I'm using the car.   :?  Hopefully my problems will go away when I put on a new belt seeing as I've changed my alternator pulley 8K km ago.  You might want to start popping VW hoods to watch their belts flap...your condition may be acceptable.

How smooth are your pulleys spinning?  Is there a notchy, rough, or dragging feeling?  Are there loose bearings which you can feel while pulling the pulleys up and down?  

Steve

[rackley]

Thanks for the reply on this continuing non-sexy troubleshooting issue :-)

I bought a junkyard AC compressor that has a very clean pulley assembly and swapped it in.  No difference in belt operation.  I also ordered a new crank pulley ($140, eeck!) in the hopes that it may help.  It should arrive today.

One other thing I noticed is that if I tighten down my AC belt real tight all the flapping is transferred to the alt belt.  If I tighten down the alt belt real tight then the flapping is on the AC belt.  Shrug.

One thing is that I haven't actually DRIVEN the car since I've been replacing all these pulleys, I've just been seeing this bad flapping continue.  I'll drive it around a bit today after I replace that crank pulley, flapping or not, and see how it fares.

The pulleys all spin without any burrs or impediments anywhere in their turning cycle.  There also doesn't appear to be any wobbling or anything aside from the crank wobbling a bit.  All the other pulleys look very very smooth.

Would you elaborate on what you mean by "melting?"  I know it's a little damaged from operating (not for very long either) but I didn't know it's melted?  Also, I don't care about slipping...I just want them not to stretch out so much that they fly off! :-)  That's the real issue - the forces of the flapping around cause the belts to stretch and stretch until eventually they just fly right off the pulleys.

On the WVO controller front, it's been a very interesting journey.  Not a cheap one either, as I've invested a fair amount of personal money into the development of the product and will undoubtedly invest more.  I'm just hoping I can recoup that investment and make a small profit eventually :-)  I know the WVO market is very price sensitive, but there simply wasn't/isn't a good, *programmable* ECU out there from any of the vendors.  The software development is equally if not more challenging than the hardware develpment, despite the fact that I'm a software engineer.  Programming microprocessors is so so so much more complex than programming for your standard x86 platform.  They have all these specific quirks and tricks and odd behaviors.  There is a fair amount of diving into assembly and lots of bit register manipulations.  That and the the development platforms/languages aren't anywhere near the same league as the x86 software development suites...  etc etc :-)

Thanks,
Ray

[fspGTD]

The WVO stuff sounds like a fun project.

There may be some engine RPM where the belt flapping calms down?  If it is worst at a low idle, you could try bumping the idle RPM by a bit.  Although it might not matter, I'm thinking even when these cars wre new these belts flapped around some.

FWIW, I thought that the sheetmetal crank pulleys you put on there looked worn, badly.  I would trash it like an old worn sheetmetal alternator pulley.

The other TD harmonic balancer pulley you have on there looked much better - couldn't tell it was worn at all from the pics.  I would try running it.  Good luck!

[rackley]

Do you mean the WP pulleys?  I didn't post any pics of the sheet metal crank pulley..

I took both the TD harmonic balancer and the WP pulleys and used some steel brush drill inserts and some circular light rust remover pads (that you stick into a drill) for removing body rust and it seemed to clean them up fairly good.  There is a little pitting in the metal from where the rust ate into them but it's not that bad.  There is still a bit of rust at the very bottom of the pulley groove, but the belt doesn't get down there anyhow so I didn't worry about it.

Thanks,
Ray