Looking for advice, Alternator bracket broke...

[Jwalsh]

I was driving home today just put a new belt on before I left work, 70.5 inches, I have removed my smog pump, and I have taken my ac out with the kit from ffrp, My alternator bracket snapped today and one of the bolts broke off in the head, going to have a fun time drilling it out tomorrow.

My question is this, should I invest in an air pump idler pulley? is there far too much pressure on the brackets, has this happend to anybody else with my setup? I seem to replace belts alot they keep stretching too much and rubbing on itself at the tensioner and water pump pulleys.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated tired of buying new belts and this is the last straw.

 

[vristang]

I was driving home today just put a new belt on before I left work, 70.5 inches, I have removed my smog pump, and I have taken my ac out with the kit from ffrp, My alternator bracket snapped today and one of the bolts broke off in the head, going to have a fun time drilling it out tomorrow.

My question is this, should I invest in an air pump idler pulley? is there far too much pressure on the brackets, has this happend to anybody else with my setup? I seem to replace belts alot they keep stretching too much and rubbing on itself at the tensioner and water pump pulleys.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated tired of buying new belts and this is the last straw.

The belt should not be rubbing on itself at any point. It sounds like someone removed the a/c pump but did not relocate the p/s pump. That could cause the belt to rub as you describe.

The bracket breaking is new to me. Can you describe where it broke? I would love to see some pics of this. I test structural materials for comercial jets, so I have a strong iterest in aluminum fatigue failures. Can you take some close up pics of the fracture surface?

 

[Jwalsh]

I'll try to take some pics tomorrow the car is still at work, The P/S pump I relocated myself with the ffrp conversion kit, should have made that more clear.

 

[vristang]

I'll try to take some pics tomorrow the car is still at work, The P/S pump I relocated myself with the ffrp conversion kit, should have made that more clear.

Actually, you did make that clear. Problem is I drink beer.

Yaaaaahhoooooooo!

Look forward to the pics.

 

[vristang]

Actually, you did make that clear. Problem is I drink beer.

.

I'm a poet and didn't know it


Yaaaaahooooo!

 

[Scorcher2005]

lol and at vristang. stupid drunks...heh, j/k

 

[vristang]

lol and at vristang. stupid drunks...heh, j/k

HEY! I resemble that remark!

 

[TheUser]

Check and see if the bolt holes in the head are kinda loose. I had the same thing happen on my GT; One of the bolts was somewhat loose in the hole, backed the car up in the grass and the alt bracket broke off and smashed into the ground. It didn't break, but probably would have if it were on pavement at the time - I bet the impact w/ the pavement is what actually broke it.

What I ended up doing was trying to drill into the bolt so I could use screw extractor. I spent forever trying to do this w/ a brand new drill and had no luck what-so-ever. I found out the bolt wasn't real tight in the hole and it had a little jagged part where I used a screwdriver or something to turn it by hand and pulled it out that way. Then, I heli-coiled those holes w/ 7/16" heli-coils and bought some threaded rod at lowes. I measured and cut the threaded rod off and put it in the head and used nuts to hold the alt bracket on; my thinking is that the more times you remove bolts (i seem to do it quite often), the more chances you have of breaking them off or damaging the threads, so I don't want to be drilling into my heads anymore anytime soon.

So far, it works fine. I'd try to find some grade 8 threaded rod if you can, but I believe I ended up using regular grade stuff because Lowes didn't have grade 8 at the time.

Your situation might be different, but that's what I did.

Good Luck

 

[Jwalsh]

Actually there was one bolt that held on that part of the bracket was still on the block, and two bolts broke, got out out of the head, was loose like you said but that other one is really in there.

I bought a hand rotary tool from snap on a while back, works wonders on cutting out bolts, saved my ass quite a few times, and hope it will again.