Getting belted (long)

[Tim Rogers]

Well, I feel it is time that I tell the tale of 3 belts (and 3 alternators...)
Back in September as some of you may recall, I purchased a '91 NX2000 hardtop
in California to be converted into an SCCA ITS racecar.  Before driving it
back to Georgia, I went to Kit Wetzler and Andy Radin's house to do some
"preventative maintenance."  This included changing the belts, which looked
like they had been on the car since it rolled off the assembly line.  Thanks
to the help of David Kempe, I got all the work done and commenced my drive to
GA.
I got as far as Lancaster, CA when my car died due to the alternator belt
sliding off of the pulleys.  I figured that I had put the belt on one groove
off and that caused the belt to get chewed up.
With the timely help of Tom Paule, Andy Phan and Andris Lavins, we put the
belt back on, push started the car and got another 2 miles down the road
before the belt came off again and departed the vehicle.  After eating dinner
at Outback, Andris and I went to the parts store and bought a belt for the
alternator only (for non-AC models), installed it and I drove the next 2200
miles home without incident.  The non-AC belt is narrower than the with-AC
belt, and it looked like it was sitting a bit crooked.  I told myself that it
was a optical illusion and did not worry about it.
Fast-foreword to 3 weeks ago and the alternator in my street '93 NX had a
bearing go bad.  I had replaced the belts about 2 months prior, so I just
grabbed an alternator off of a spare motor that I had sitting in my garage
(thanks to Robert Burnes) and put it on the car.
That alt. lasted all of 4 days before a bearing went and I just chalked it up
to the motor having sat out in the weather for a few years.  I went to the
parked racecar, pulled the alt. from that SR20DE and went to put it on the
street car.  As I went to tighten down the belt, I saw that the belt was
larger than the pulley and realized why I had the problem on the racecar in
Cali.

- continued -