Can this old truck be saved? Look what happened

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-04

[00:00:03]Welcome, man. Welcome back to the channel, guys. Do y'all see this? Do y'all see this? This is towed in. All right, I can see why. I mean, I didn't tow it into the shop. I actually drove it in the shop, but as you can see, there's a likelihood that I didn't have no power steering, and I didn't, guys.

[00:00:24]So, this was extremely hard to steer into the shop. Now, likely you can see the belt is worn out. Now, first of all, this car has 176,000 miles. So, I don't know, guys. I'm uh one of those realist type guys who uh can understand a little bit about physics. Uh, I do know everything under the hood that rolls, uh, rolling, anything that's going to have a bearing in it, uh, will be considered to me a wearable item, meaning over time it will wear out. Okay? It will go out on you at the most craziest time, guys. That's why some things you should just replace anyway just based off time. Now, there's really no time interval on a certain on certain parts, okay? You replace it when they go bad. But guys, you can, however, act proactive and uh trying to catch some of this stuff at the path. You know, meet it at the path. Don't let it strand you or abandon you or get you in trouble. So, things like this uh now, as you can see, this this pulley, this is likely the problem, the culprit on why all of this happened. And it cost him what, two, what's the going rate for tow trucks nowadays? $200 $300? I don't know. I haven't checked in a while. But just by the mere fact of knowing, okay, my car has 150,000 miles. Uh surely there's some things now this things like compressors. I mean, you don't really need AC, but keep in mind, guys, this clutch, this is a serpentine belt, meaning there's only one belt. So if the AC clutch freezes up, um, you back to square one. Now, should you just run off and replace your AC compressor just because No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying simple replaceable item that has a lot of this going to have as much turning rotation done as this because they all connected together. So, I guess one could ask why replace this these two idler and tensioner and not do anything else. I mean, it's rolling. They all getting the same amount of work. I mean, but in some cases, guys, some things will give you warning such as this AC, this compressor, you likely would get a squeak, a loud squeak. Even same with this alternator, you likely would get a grinding noise if the bearings inside it was failing. What else is on this? Looks like a power steering. you will likely hear a whining noise. But now those same warning can give off with a pulley or tensioner. It just um it just either didn't happen or the you know the customer didn't wasn't aware of it. But at any rate, we are here today with this problem.

[00:03:16]Okay. Yes. I'm going to write up this is a tensioner tensioner pulley. Now the tensioner is likely still good. In fact, let me grab a wrench.

[00:03:27]Okay, let's put a wrench on here.

[00:03:33]Y'all hear that?

[00:03:37]All that noise when that tensioner flex back up.

[00:03:43]Okay, that is a bad uh the bearings inside or the tensioner spring is uh loose and worn. Okay. So, it likely gave off tension on the belt and the ending results is this. Okay. So, I will not write up everything in the turning everything in this area. I will have a right up the tensioner and the pulley idler pulley. All right. These two these parts will likely give off some kind of early warning sign in the event they going to fail. So would these. But it just didn't happen. I don't know why. So guys, no sense of chitchatting about it.

[00:04:19]Uh, yes, there's a water pump down there. I will grab that pulley and make sure it is stable because um, you know, there are a number of things that could have caused this power steering.

[00:04:32]I got to get the old belt off first so I can start turning pulling. I got to get some gloves and put on guys. I always wear safety safety uh, safety wear.

[00:04:43]Okay, but this belt is wrapped. Oh, look at that, guys. So, yeah, I got to grab some razor blades and I got to cut this whole belt out of here.

[00:04:55]Got to get all this out of here in essence so you can finish diagnosing it. Okay, you really want to check all this stuff before you just write it up.

[00:05:10]Look at that.

[00:05:15]Got it all off of the power steering.

[00:05:19]Now I can see how the power steering feel.

[00:05:24]No looseness, no noise. But that's not an accurate way to test it. Best thing you can do, guys, is um get your main two things replaced and uh put a belt on it and then run it and see from there what's uh what else is affected. So, it's one of those situations where the customer may need to the customer may get a second phone call. Uh, this one I uh something like this I typically uh activate the word uh start here. Okay, we got to start here.

[00:05:55]This is one of those situation. All right, let's see that that is rolling, but now the grooves are contaminated with little rubber. So, the belt might have a hard time staying on there. Look at that. All these grooves have rubber.

[00:06:10]I'm going to try my best to clean it out. If not, you know, it is what it is.

[00:06:14]This one the same way. Y'all see all that rubber trapped in the groove.

[00:06:22]Yeah, I'm going try to get it all out.

[00:06:23]Like I said, I can't, I can. If I can't, I can't. So, we'll see. All right, let me go get some parts, guys. Stay tuned.

[00:06:30]All righty, guys. Here we back at this old model Dakota truck.

[00:06:35]I remember this with the the belt. I got most of the old belt out. Well, I got parts here, guys. Okay, look at the parts they got me. And I think that's simply because these parts have been discontinued. So, we have to go to AutoZone or Advanced Auto.

[00:06:53]Well, nice belt. I have a new I assume this tensioner, which is the part that failed. Okay, remember we talked about this earlier, guys. You probably should likely replace these uh every 100,000 mi or every 80,000 anytime you do if everybody's doing a service maintenance at 30, 60, and 90. I say at uh 90,000 miles, man, get the your serpentine belt tensioner and the illers. Is this the er? Yes. Get your idler pulley replaced, guys. They roll. They have a lifespan to them just like anything else. Okay, here's the er.

[00:07:29]It didn't come apart, but the tensioner shattered. Okay, bearings just couldn't take it no more. Bearings overheated.

[00:07:38]It just came apart. All right, guys.

[00:07:40]This is fairly selfexplanatory, guys. So, I mean, you can see how the tensioner bolts to the block and you can see how the pulley bolts to the block.

[00:07:50]And I will be looking up the belt routing if uh I don't have to, guys.

[00:07:54]Look at that. Okay, the belt routing right there. So, I'm going to follow these instructions and that should be fairly it. Of course, a nice long test drive, guys, cuz remember uh you still have uh pulleys on the car that doesn't um that's not idle idle pulley or anything like that. These are component pulleys, alternator pulley, AC compressor pulley, and power steering pulley. So, but like I said earlier, I will try to clean out most of the debris out of the grooves. All right, guys. I got work to do. Let me grab a set of gloves and we going to get to work. Stay tuned, guys. I'll be right back.

[00:08:34]All right, guys. Uh, got this off. Pretty simple. Just put this move the shim out of here.

[00:08:50]Okay, just transfer the shim into here in the boat and that can be installed. Now, as far as this tensioner, this one's a new, not new, but I haven't seen one like this in a while. Y'all see that? The bolt, it doesn't bolt into a bracket. Uh, it's a nut behind the bracket that holds this in place. So, I had to use my swivel wrench to get behind it and, uh, and ratchet that off. So, and I don't got that much room to turn. So, this could take a minute, guys. But it will come off. Stay tuned.

[00:09:32]All right, guys. Finally.

[00:09:36]Got it off.

[00:09:38]Whoa.

[00:09:40]Yes. This just nearly froze up.

[00:09:47]Just age, guys. Just old age. Everything has a lifespan to it. Like I said, we exceeded the lifespan on that. I should have had replaced that long before. Okay.

[00:09:59]I hope this should be That's the difference between the OEM and aftermarket. It just has a bigger housing. Pulley side still the same. So, it should work. All right, guys. I'm going to install all this belt and we're going to go from there. We should be done. It's pretty easy, self-explanatory. And guys, I don't want to bore you with this. Like I said earlier, I'm going to clean off the pulleys and that should be a wrap with this car. Thanks for watching.

[00:10:23]Heat. Heat.