Good day.
Never touched any pulley in ten years, nor replaced the 'serpentine' belt. Found that the edge of the belt climbed on top of the engine side of the steering pump pulley. Repositioning it properly, did it again.
The belt ended shedding-cutting off itself (1 groove) about ~3 mm of it; and self aligned to that steering pump pulley leaving a gap on the radiator side. The compressor pulley had the belt properly seated an aligned. Now created the 3mm gap is on its engine side.
There is nothing moved, tampered with, loose, bent, wobbly, tensioner is fine... What could have happened ? The image shows the left pulley with gap on 'top'; the right pulley with gap at 'bottom'.

Is there a way to displace the pulley inwards or outwards into alignment ? The steering pump pulley would better be ~3mm towards the engine.

 

Does the drivers side head have the bracket behind the accessory mount for the PS/AC/ACE? I've seen several belts look like that & that bracket was not re-installed after some engine work. If it's missing you'll certainly be off.

 

This will mean you need to replace a few bits, I recently had the same problem with one of my other vehicles , my belt Was ripping on one side like yours, so after replacing the idlers we found that the tensioned was bouncing during acceleration, not a lot but it was the only thing that we were not happy with, we change the tensioner and it still moved but with a lot less bounce, and I have not had the problem since

 

Thanks for responding, Best 4x4.
Went and checked; the bracket numbered '7' is there, if that is what you mean. Actually; removing it could correct the misalignment.

 

The way the belt is now (picture) after self-narrowing (it shaved 1 groove), aligns well. Just drove 220 miles the weekend as is with one less groove... Did not have to replace it with the spare new one on the side of the road; plus prefer not to put the new one and trash it to self-destruction before correcting the problem.
Thanks, frosty; will investigate that.

 

In the good old days we use to check if pulleys and tensioner were aligned using a straight edge or thin fishing line it if you pull it tight across the face of a large pull the across the ACE, pull, Steering pull you can see if there is any misalignment, as a rule of thumb it should touch the sides of the pulley, as an example if it touches both pulley on the outer edges but not on the inner edgeor only 3 edges, it’s not lined up,

 

checked your pullies for cracks or broken edges, i had the same issue, if the side walls of any pullie are broken it will shread belts quick

 

Solved...
Removed the grooved pulley (numbered 4). The triangular flange fitted to the hydraulic pump shaft behind the grooved pulley is just pressed in. Somehow it moved outwards ~4mm. Attempting to remove the pump to press it in, found so much complication that stopped the thingy and just hammered it in with a long bar. Done.
One less thing to deal with. I can replace the belt anytime in peace of mind.

 

same issue with mine back in 2019… I didn’t trust it so I changed it out. Im having what I think is just a complete pump failure now with a cheap pump I bought on Amazon as a fix for the initial issue. I have no belt issues and no fluid motion in the reservoir so I’m just gonna change it out.

I need to find a coolant leak anyway so I figured this is the best time to check everything out. I’ll keep you updated.

waiting on parts

 

I just bought a PS Pump for my 95 D1 (before Christmas) and the triangle flange the pulley mounts to was the wrong size. I had to use a puller and switch over the OEM ZF PS Pump triangle flange onto the new PS Pump. I then had to align it front to back which wasn't hard at all.