Broke a blower belt tonight

[slagburn]

Anybody out there wondering what happens if/ when you break a belt on a Roush/ Whipple PD blower combo- nothing. Drive it home. The car won't exactly be a beast running on the little bypass valve but it'll get you there. No surging or other weird driveability issues noticed.

Not sure why the belt let go, I was at the track, had just ran a mid-10 pass and next time around it didn't want to hit the tires for the burnout, I did manage a burnout with no blower belt somehow.. then the tree came down and it was just a complete pooch. Get to the pits and pop the hood, there's the belt coiled up on the blower. So I drove it 70 miles home at 80mph though it did feel like a 4-cyl.

Belt had about 5K miles and a crapload of passes on it, prior belt had over 20K miles. The blower kit/ pullies/ tensioner etc have almost 40K miles so I'll have to check everything tomorrow and see if the tensioner's out of whack or a pulley bearing is going out or something.

 

[drewzx3]

Damn u have 40k on it Already with the charger?

 

[kbroush]

It could have just been defective. I've had belts jump off and drove the car home with no issues.

 

[vortecd]

What brand belt was it? Not a bad idea to keep a spare in the trunk. I always have spare blower belts in my '87 but never had to use them.

 

[grnenvy]

I would say u got your moneys worth out of that belt. Tensioner, bearing issue? Keep us posted.
On a side note I never got more then 5-10k out of any belt on my Vortech or Paxton.

 

[mazroth]

What brand belt was it? Not a bad idea to keep a spare in the trunk. I always have spare blower belts in my '87 but never had to use them.

x2 on keeping a spare with you.

 

[JDV]

Slag, how much boost you running? Other mods?

 

[wnt2gofst]

I would say u got your moneys worth out of that belt. Tensioner, bearing issue? Keep us posted.
On a side note I never got more then 5-10k out of any belt on my Vortech or Paxton.

Interesting. I got almost 15000 on my paxton and belt looks brand new still.

from the famous tapatalk.

 

[sambandit]

Last night it was a good thing that the alt is on a different belt than the blower!

 

[slagburn]

I would say u got your moneys worth out of that belt. Tensioner, bearing issue? Keep us posted.
On a side note I never got more then 5-10k out of any belt on my Vortech or Paxton.

I don't know, I'd think a lot more than 4-5K miles would be expected after the prior one went 20K. But on the other hand, I'm spinning a 2.9 pretty hard and the 20K belt was driving a 2.3, so maybe this is the new normal. Just looked under the hood in the daylight, nothing looks wonky with bearings, tensioner etc so who knows. I'm just glad it didn't let go at high rpm and mess up the hood.