Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Alternator Belt?

Hello all,
I'm New here and happy to have found you
My 95 Mercury Mystique LS V6 has been awesome since I bought it used a few years ago. But, I just drove from Halifax to Barrie Ontario and the engine was making a squeeling sort of noise and then died as soon as I parked it.
I was told that my belt (???) was wearing out at my last oil change but he didn't think it was an urgent repair.

The car has 160k on it now. Can anybody tell me if this sounds like just a belt breaking and about how much I can expect to pay for repairing it?

Thanks!

well the easiest way is to just pop the hood and look on the passengers side of the engine and see if the Serpentine belt is worn or cracked.. is so there is a tensioner pully that you have to pull to get the belt off and the new one on

Thanks, I checked it out and there is a diagram of where the belt should be and it does appear to be in all the right places, so I am going to assume (hope?) thats all it is. Any idea what I would be looking at to have it replaced?
I am not mechanically inclined and would not venture to do it myself, but I don't want to get shafted...being female makes going to the mechanic a crap shoot. My own mechanic, whom I trust implicitly, is miles away

You mean the belt looks fine and not broken and all is intact? Then I would say that is not the reason your engine died. What happens when you try to start it? The engine should run even if there's no belt. Of course you can't run it for long as the alternator isn't charging the battery when there's no belt and of course there's no a/c or power steering.

I just replaced my belt and it's rather easy to do, all you need is a 3/8 inch breaker bar and push down on the tensioner and you can slip the old belt on and stick in the new one. A little tricky putting in the new one, I'd route the back items first, then the tensioner, then the ac and leave the top one off, then push in the tensioner and slip that on last. Got the belt for about $15 at Autozone. Took about a half hour or so to do. I suppose you could find some local mechanic and tell him to throw on a belt, pretty basic.

A friend of mine said that Jiffy Lube charged him $70 to change the belt on his truck, they said it was a $40 belt. Our belt lists for $28 from Ford and fordpartsonline.com sells it for $22.43.

Oh yeah, about the noise and it dying, I did have that happen to me several years ago. That time it turned out it was the crankshaft pully/damper which I think was at the bottom on the engine. Had the dealer do it at the time as I couldn't stand the noise, engine never died on me though. Pully was $58 and I got hit with $38 for the belt at the time. I think at the time I got an aftermarket belt for $25 so maybe the price of belts have gone down in the last few years, hard to believe the price of any automotive part going down. Then there was that 2.1 hours for labor which might also have been robbery. $251.12 at the time. Ouch, hope that's not the case for you.

If you do a search, you'll find other threads on pullys and I guess it could also be the idler pully, or idler tensioner that's making the noise.