Hi everyone -- I had my serpentine belt shear yesterday. I heard a squealing, and when I checked under the hood the inside row of the belt had just sheared right off and wrapped itself around my fan clutch. I managed to clear out the remains and started the engine just to check on things and it's making a pretty loud squealing noise. I can't quite pinpoint if it's coming from any engine component in particular or if it's just squealing because the belt is shot now. See the attached video for the noise.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? Does it seem like a simple belt failure, or is this a symptom of something else going bad? Belt is NOT new.

 

Something is out of alignment or you have a broken pullie somewhere
I had this happen when my tensioner pullie cracked a bit on the side.

 

Also good time to replace your tensioner and replace or inspect both idler pullies
I did this last summer and one pullie was very hard to turn

 

UPDATE -- Got new belt and took the fan off to inspect everything. The power steering pulley was misaligned by one full belt notch. I was wondering how and why this could possibly happen -- was reading that some aftermarket pumps could 'walk' the pulley out of alignment over time, but that was a huge misalignment. Was just about to go order a new pump when I decided to take the pulley off the pump itself for further inspection.

Boy am I glad I did, because as it turns out the pulley was in fact installed BACKWARDS. As soon as I popped it off, I saw the 'FRONT' markings on the side that was facing the wrong way. Reinstalled correctly, installed my new belt, and all is well.

Last week I had my mechanic do my head gaskets, and I guess one of his workers reinstalled the pulley the wrong way when they were putting everything back together. Not good!

 

Belt cost reimbursement?

 

Yeah, definitely going to get reimbursed for the belt, at the very least.

Honestly I'm just really glad I noticed. I was ready to call it a day before I thought to take a closer look at that pump pulley.

 

I did that myself once, with the same result of the belt being shredded. My pulley didn't have any "front" marking on it but it's easy to spot that it's out of alignment when you take a moment to look closely.