Gotta love those Cubans...

Friday at lunch I heard a funny squeak coming from the jeep. It didn't sound particularly like a fan belt, (or serpentine belt in this case) and the pitch didn't change with the engine speed. I was a bit flummoxed by it, and then it went away. I did have a squeaky belt prior to that, so I figured that it was the belt, and that I would have it replaced while it's in getting the back-end fixed finally from my claim for shipping damage.

Friday night the noise came back as we were coming home from Aqua Beach. Right around the West Bay Cemetery, I thought I heard a <TINK> noise. Within 100 yards or so (at 40mph) I felt the steering wheel get 'tighter' I realized that I was losing the power steering. As we came around the curve and pulled into Foster's to hit the ATM, the power steering went completely and the lights dimmed. I looked at the voltmeter and it was showing discharge state. “Great,”  I thought, “The belt snapped“. We pulled into the parking lot under one of the lights and popped the hood and the belt was fine, but loose. there was one spot that there was a little roller, but it seemed to be too small, and when we turned it by hand, it made that squeaking noise I heard earlier that day. That was the culprit. The tink noise I heard was when the pulley fell off that, hit the fan and fell out the bottom of the engine compartment. John walked home from there and we limped the last 1/2 mile or so home before the battery got drained and parked it for the night.

Saturday morning I opened the hood, got out the toolbox and took the bearing off. Junior (neighbor) let me borrow his pick-up truck to go into town and get a new one. I called first, to NAPA and they said they had one. When I got there they said "yes the computer says we have one, but we can't find it" great. They called Parker's for me, and they didn't have one either. On a whim, I stopped by Car City, who are the Honda/Mitsu/Chrysler/Jeep dealer on island to see if they had one. They didn't, but then he said "oh, hold on... I have one for a '93 if you want to try that" so I said sure I'll give it a try. It was $35 and he said if it didn't fit, just bring it back and he'd give me a refund. It didn't fit. And they closed at noon on Saturday. (and everywhere is closed Sunday)

My last hope for a part was from Renee's derelict jeep. She thought it was a 94 or 95, and it was a 4cyl, same as mine. Great, should be a quick thing, especially now that we knew how to get the part off the engine block. Her jeep was up to it's mirrors in flood water from the hurricane, so she told me and Chip "Cuddles" Dumas that we could have whatever parts we wanted/needed off it, and then she was going to scrap it. We got to her house and popped the hood... and since her jeep didn't have air conditioning, she had a different belt setup, and consequently didn't have the pulley that I was missing. Great.

We had a brilliant idea then, to take her shorter serpentine belt off her engine, and put it on mine bypassing the a/c and missing pulley as it was on hers. We couldn't figure out how to get the power steering pump loosened off to get the belt off, after taking like six bolts out. Even after I found this article on how to do it, I couldn't see the adjuster screw that they were talking about on hers or mine. We ended up using a pry bar and screwdriver and working/wiggling the belt off the power steering pump.

On the way back, we scanned the side of the road for my pulley that fell off (Seb went running up and down Friday night looking for it and couldn't find it) and holy cow, we found it! It was further down the beach than we thought, sitting on the OTHER side of the road. We pulled over and picked it up... and it was PLASTIC! What had happened was the bearing in the middle of that pulley had seized. the tension/friction of the serpentine belt kept the plastic pulley spinning on the seized pulley, and since we were doing 40mph and the engine was around 2000rpm, it heated up until the plastic started to melt, at which point it "slid" off the pulley, hit the fan blade and got knocked out of the engine compartment. Once there was slack in the belt, the alternator stopped spinning, the water pump stopped pumping and the power steering stopped working all at once. The A/C would have been out as well, but with yet ANOTHER cold front coming through, it wasn't necessary.

We got back here at 12:30 and figured out the adjustment for the power steering pump. We put the new belt on and tightened it back up again, fired it up and made sure everything was working. It did! hoooraaay! Big Up to Junior for helping me get around and get the "new" belt in. It'll definitely last long enough to order parts, and maybe next week when I take her in to get the tailgate and bumper fixed, they can install it and re-install the belt for me, because it was definitely a pain in the ass.

We cleaned up, put everything away and I was thinking I just had time to hop in the shower and head to the airport to pick someone up at 1:45... I sat down here for just a second while the water was heating up and checked the flight status, just in case the flight was late, I could take a little more time. That flight got in 25 mins EARLY. As in 10 minutes ago! D'oh! I gave my hands a quick scrub so I wouldnt get oil all over my steering wheel and flew off to the airport... forgetting that I left the old parts on my front bumper. They stayed on until I got to the arrivals "loop" and when I made the turn, they clattered off to the side and made that same TINK noise when they hit the ground. I look in my mirror and see a pulley go rolling across the road. I had a brief moment of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thinking the same thing just happened, but it was the "spare" one I pulled off of Renee's jeep.

So my Jeep is running again, thanks to some help from Junior, some parts from Renee and a little “Cuban Mechanical Ingenuity” it should hold me over for a few days/week til I can get the right parts sent down here.