Tazling
Veteran Member
- Joined
- May 17, 2021
- Messages
- 73
- Vessel Name
- DARXIDE
- Vessel Make
- Grand Banks 32
My old F-L 120 has this issue... familiar I am sure to all owners of same... that the alt/pump v belt which runs in a triangle between the main engine shaft pulley and the two devices driven by it, runs behind the main coolant hose descending from the header tank. In other words, you have to drain the coolant and pop that main hose off in order to change a belt. This is sheer gibbering lunacy imho, but that's how it is.
Some previous owner installed two extra belts because of just this issue. But some (other?) previous owner didn't tie them up properly ... so by the time I got around to checking them out, they had been gnawed by a pulley and both had big bites taken out of them. So... not reassuring. Pretty useless as spares, at this point.
Anyway, much head scratching ensued until I finally googled my way to (vaguely recalled) Fenner link belts. I figured I would buy a few metres of link belt and take it with me this summer, just in case; the link belts can be broken and rejoined at will, easily, quickly -- and so can be installed even in a cockamamie setup like this where they thread their way behind and through the plumbing.
Well, fast forward to this summer's longish coastal trip. Taking a little sightsee on the central coast of BC, suddenly I notice that there's no alternator output -- and then holy cow, the engine temp is pegged! so of course I pull the kill switch asap and go investigate. The v belt has disintegrated in a spectacular way -- delaminated along its length and then shredded -- there are bits of belt scattered here and there in the engine compartment.
Luck was with us. We were adrift, but the wind was light and the tide was carrying us away from a nearby reef. At a guesstimate we had about an hour to fix the problem before drifting to the other side of the channel. So out came the brand new link belt -- and now a real quick OJT lesson in how to install one. On a very hot engine, which was no fun... but no one got actually burned, and we only used about 30 minutes of that hour. (now, with experience, we could do it a whole lot faster).
Anyway, the short version of the story is that it worked (yay) -- the overheat did not seem to have damaged anything -- we limped back at cautious RPM to the nearest port with admittedly inadequate belt tension from our first-time installation attempt -- alternator slipping, but water pump working, engine temp normal -- and then had all the time in the world to wrestle with it some more at the dock.
The really important thing to know is that the link belts have to be "set" (get rid of all the small slop in X number of links, in this case 63 links to start with) at which point they have loosened... and you have to take the belt off and remove a link (or several) and reinstall it. (If we had only known -- just a few minutes of run time, or even a couple of whacks of starter, is enough to take out the first dose of slack.) Then put a few more engine hours on it ... and you have to take it off again and remove a link, and maybe 10 or 12 hours later you might have to do it again... so this process happened a couple of times as the engine hours mounted up during the rest of our cruise.
But the end result is very good -- the belt has bedded down nicely into the pulley grooves, there's no more stretching, the tension is perhaps a bit less taut than I might have liked, but adequate (no slipping alternator, engine coolant good).
These belts are said to be heat proof and oil proof, and after the slack is all taken up they are said to be stretch proof as well. I hope they live up to their rep because they are also bloody expensive.
But not as expensive as drifting onto something sharp and pointy while desperately trying to drain the coolant system, swap a belt, then refill the coolant system! Just swapping the belt takes quite enough time without all those extra steps. And handling boiling coolant in a seaway under time pressure does not sound like OSHA-approved fun to me.
So I would like to raise a ragged cheer for Fenner Drive link belt, and recommend it to folks who (a) have multiple V belts of various sizes (make any size you want on demand) or (b) silly setups like mine where you can't swap a belt without getting into a plumbing project.
if anyone knows anything bad about Fenner's product, please tell me now before I get to trusting it too much
Some previous owner installed two extra belts because of just this issue. But some (other?) previous owner didn't tie them up properly ... so by the time I got around to checking them out, they had been gnawed by a pulley and both had big bites taken out of them. So... not reassuring. Pretty useless as spares, at this point.
Anyway, much head scratching ensued until I finally googled my way to (vaguely recalled) Fenner link belts. I figured I would buy a few metres of link belt and take it with me this summer, just in case; the link belts can be broken and rejoined at will, easily, quickly -- and so can be installed even in a cockamamie setup like this where they thread their way behind and through the plumbing.
Well, fast forward to this summer's longish coastal trip. Taking a little sightsee on the central coast of BC, suddenly I notice that there's no alternator output -- and then holy cow, the engine temp is pegged! so of course I pull the kill switch asap and go investigate. The v belt has disintegrated in a spectacular way -- delaminated along its length and then shredded -- there are bits of belt scattered here and there in the engine compartment.
Luck was with us. We were adrift, but the wind was light and the tide was carrying us away from a nearby reef. At a guesstimate we had about an hour to fix the problem before drifting to the other side of the channel. So out came the brand new link belt -- and now a real quick OJT lesson in how to install one. On a very hot engine, which was no fun... but no one got actually burned, and we only used about 30 minutes of that hour. (now, with experience, we could do it a whole lot faster).
Anyway, the short version of the story is that it worked (yay) -- the overheat did not seem to have damaged anything -- we limped back at cautious RPM to the nearest port with admittedly inadequate belt tension from our first-time installation attempt -- alternator slipping, but water pump working, engine temp normal -- and then had all the time in the world to wrestle with it some more at the dock.
The really important thing to know is that the link belts have to be "set" (get rid of all the small slop in X number of links, in this case 63 links to start with) at which point they have loosened... and you have to take the belt off and remove a link (or several) and reinstall it. (If we had only known -- just a few minutes of run time, or even a couple of whacks of starter, is enough to take out the first dose of slack.) Then put a few more engine hours on it ... and you have to take it off again and remove a link, and maybe 10 or 12 hours later you might have to do it again... so this process happened a couple of times as the engine hours mounted up during the rest of our cruise.
But the end result is very good -- the belt has bedded down nicely into the pulley grooves, there's no more stretching, the tension is perhaps a bit less taut than I might have liked, but adequate (no slipping alternator, engine coolant good).
These belts are said to be heat proof and oil proof, and after the slack is all taken up they are said to be stretch proof as well. I hope they live up to their rep because they are also bloody expensive.
But not as expensive as drifting onto something sharp and pointy while desperately trying to drain the coolant system, swap a belt, then refill the coolant system! Just swapping the belt takes quite enough time without all those extra steps. And handling boiling coolant in a seaway under time pressure does not sound like OSHA-approved fun to me.So I would like to raise a ragged cheer for Fenner Drive link belt, and recommend it to folks who (a) have multiple V belts of various sizes (make any size you want on demand) or (b) silly setups like mine where you can't swap a belt without getting into a plumbing project.
if anyone knows anything bad about Fenner's product, please tell me now before I get to trusting it too much
