Auxiliary belt tensioner - help!

Hi all

Jumped into the P38 this morning to get some croissants, alternator fault and no PAS. Car now looks like the attached picture.

Turns out the auxiliary belt tensioner has self destructed. The belt is intact. Looking at the attached pics, I think you can see an area where there was obviously a pre-existing crack (it is dark and oil stained).

Any body any idea what might have caused this?? All pulley bearings seem OK, no obvious wear.

The biggest problem: I have searched RAVE and cannot see any instructions for removing the tensioner (only the spring/damper bit). Anybody know how to do this? I am hoping with a big enough allen key it will just undo; but don't want to force it. I have tried with a home made tool and applied a fair amount of torque, it didn't budge. I am praying it is not integral to the front cover; as removing that is a cyl head off job....

If anybody can shed some light on this; I would be much obliged.....

Cheers,

Jerry

Mine did just the same few weeks back, just a case of undoing the end cap with a big allen key ( I welded a bolt with right size head to a bit of bar for mine) and yes it was tight had to heat it up a bit before it let go, think it had thread lock on it no oil came out though.

I had similar problem last year and removed as mentioned. To replace it as I am in the west of Irl. and could not wait a week for delivery I fabricated my own one. I got a suitable bore tube for the centre to which I welded legs to approximate the position of the old ones. I drilled as required and used the old pulley. For the tensioner I used a threaded eyebolt. Of course I feared the rigid setup would lead to a short belt life, however after approx 10k miles all is well. I will add a photo later

Thanks guys really appreciate your help - knowing that it should just unscrew, out came the 18" stilson (not a tool usually used when working on the car I might add!) and it came undone very easily - so now just need to source a replacement and get it all back together....

Cheers,

Jerry

Sorry about delay with pics mentioned in previous post, but here they are, may inspire someone sometime!

update - parts arrived from Island 4x4 today (excellent service; thanks!). Put new tensioner bracket and pulleys, new belts. Then when I come to tension the belts... discover that the tensioner/damper unit is not working (it appears to be stuck - it did not spring back after I levered the tensioner to get the belt over the alternator pulley). I am now wondering if this is the cause of the original problem - the belt got slacker and slacker and eventually jumped off taking the tensioner bracket with it. What is odd though is that I had no signs of belt slip - no screaching, no loss of PAS. Any thoughts anybody??

Anyway, time to order a new tensioner spring/damper unit... need to get this thing back on the road, it has work to do...!


Cheers,

Jerry

I suggest double check belt route via rave, easy to get wrong, I did it wrong but thought it looked ok. Note the tensioner does not move much

Good advice Mayo, thanks. I couldn't figure out the routing so did look it up on RAVE. My tensioner has no spring in it at all.

Cheers

Jerry

In the process of doing mine, and noted how the belt came off

It runs around the outside of the 4 outer pulleys and inside the centre two

<edit> tried drawing an ASCII diagram but the formatting got lost in the forum software

Difficult to explain, recommend you look it up on RAVE if you have it.

I didn't take the radiator out of mine.. just the fan and cowling so managed to save most of the coolant.

Good luck with your repair

bb