On my '02 Durango 5.9L, my serpentine belt partially sheared away... but there is still about half of it left and running everything. Fortunately this happened close to home and I was able to pull into my driveway.

Obviously the rest of the belt is likely to go at any moment, but I need to get it to the nearest repair shop (About 15 miles away.)

So here's my question: Let's say I try to gently drive it to the repair shop, and the rest of the belt completely breaks when I'm halfway there.

What will happen if I'm driving along and suddenly have no belt at all? Will I be able to limp on to the repair shop, or am I going to have a major disaster?

 

Do you have triple a? Think about all the things that belt is doing. Can you afford a new engine if you overheat it, or a new battery. tow trucks IMO dont cost as much as repairs and the serpentine belt could be done by most people. in their driveway. Unless you need a pulley and dont have even the basic tools I would do it myself. It is like a 1/2 hr job

 

You could change it yourself. It's very simple

 

if the belt failed due to old age, i concurr w/ the suggestions to replace it yourself, its not difficult if you have the belt routing available to you (as long as some belt is left you do)

if it failed bc of a bad pulley or accessory that is being driven by the belt then that is a different story as we dont know your competency with working on cars.


if you do try to drive it and the belt goes out you will NOT get very far because that belt drives thew ater pump, if the engine is 100% cold you may get 5 miles before it starts to overheat, however if it were me i would NOT be willing to chance it. (you will also loose power steering if you loose the belt which makes driving not so much fun)

 

Thanks for the input. My level of skill is more than 90% of American drivers (I change my own oil) but that really isn't saying much since most American drivers don't know how to open their hood. :-)

How can I determine if it's just an old belt that was ready to go, or if there's something wrong with one of the pulleys etc.?

The belt has about 50k miles on it.

I suspect it probably is a pulley, specifically the A/C pulley. My A/C went out six months ago, I figured it was low freon, but I checked that and the pressure was fine. Then I got busy and then the weather got cold so worrying about the A/C was less and less of a priority. But long story short... now I'm guessing that the most likely case is that the A/C pulley had issues which shortened the life of the belt. Not sure how to verify that though. However easy it may be, I don't want to put a belt on by myself just to wear it out again quickly.

 

Also... it's like 25 degrees outside... does that buy me any extra time if the water pump goes out?

 

the cold may buy you a few extra minutes, but not enough.

as for the a/c pulley being the culprit, you can check this, remove the belt and try to spin the pulley by hand, if it spins freely then the pulley itself is fine, and the compressor may be going out, unplug the a/c clutch to prevent it from engaging.

you can check most of the accessory pullys in this way while the belt is off, if you find one that doesnt spin smoothly and evenly you have found your culprit, 50k miles is nothing for a serpentine belt, iirc the change interval is 5years or 100k miles (ill check and get back to you)