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How to Check Belts

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From Quick Guide: Car Troubleshooting: Checking Belts

Summary: When checking car engine belts, look for cracks or fraying. Inspect car belts with tips from an automotive service excellence (ASE)-certified master auto technician in this free video on automotive maintenance.

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By Dave Erb
eHow Presenter

Dave Erb has been tinkering with cars as long as he can remember. Dave is an ASE Certified Master L1 Technician with 21 years experience in automotive care and maintenance. Dave opened...read more

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Video Transcript

"My name is Dave Erb from Dave's Ultimate Automotive and we're talking about checking your belts. Today's cars for the most part have what they call a serpentine belt which looks like this. The reason they call it a serpentine belt is it actually serpentines back and forth over pulleys it just doesn't go around the pulleys it goes back and forth in between idlers and pulleys. What you're looking for in today's belt is cracking and fraying. If the edges are threading apart. If you see the rib side of the belt and you see some minor crackings, that's actually o'kay. You'll see that in a lot of belts and the belt will still have a long and useful life. If you see a lot of cracking or chunks missing from the belt or the edges coming apart like that, that is the time that the belt does need to be changed and you might also look for a reason that the belt is doing this. It might be a pulley issue or a tensioner issue, the thing that keeps the belts tight or a bearing coming apart that is putting lateral stress on the belt. So you don't want to just replace the belt and go on down the road because you will ruin another belt and have a problem in the very near future. So you want to go ahead and check all those things, make sure they're running true and lined up to each other. Belt noises like squeals and squeaks might indicate that there is a problem with the pulley system as well. Once again as far as the belt and age are concerned, the older a belt will get the more it will start looking like this, a lot more deeper cracks in it. I would say that anywhere from 40 to 60,000 miles is about the useful life for one of these type of belts and after that really the rubber becomes aged and stressed and that would be a good time to change it. That's belts."

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