Well I guess everything with the emissions went good but today I started my truck and after a little bit of squeeking I noticed lots of dark smoke comming around my van. I turned it off and had a feeling in my head what happend. I poped the hood and saw the belt on the bottom and felt the pully on the alternator was hot after a cooldown it did not want to move. It has been squeeking at start up for some time, but went away after a few min. I had a feeling it was starting to go and now it did. So after one thing another comes up. At least I got the emissions passed lol.
Now I need to see if its a 95amp or 130amp both same price at around 130$. I get a good discount there, motorcraft would be around 230-250 based on the webpage. The guy at Carquest has both and for belt he has a "gates"(his better one a serpentine) for almost 50$ and another cheep one for $16(Also serpentine). I'm leaning towards the gates but dont know what amps I need. Have any of you had any exp with the gates belt? -- im going to start taking the intake off to see if I can find some stamp. Will there be any difference with the amps? I have the base model van.


Thanks, Mike

 

hi, sorry to hear about your alternator, all i know about belts, here in the UK, is that my harley has used a gates belt with great success. i dont that that info will be much good to you but some one will have some sound advice for you ok. bokker.

 

Hey Bokker its all good, stuff happens. I could not find out what kind of alternator I had by looking at it when I pulled it out -- so I called the ford dealer, the parts guy was able to find that it was a 130amp based by the VIN number. So I called cq and got that one and the gates belt. When It got here everything looked good but the pulley was a little bigger on the new on, I went ahead a installed it anyway. I did have have very hard time putting on the belt as it was very tight but at the end I was able to slip it on the tensioner pulley and using a long bar to give it as much slack as possable so it is a very tight fit. We will see how things work out with this car. Later

 

scratching my head

I just can't remember for certain the details, but I do seem to remember from several years ago here in the 4.2 forum, somebody talking about differences in belt width or number of ribs or something like that.
Maybe a search would find something.

Anyways, sounds like you are on the road to success.

On my 2000 F150, the alternator failed at about 130K miles and I got a replacement and belt from Advance Auto. Both worked just fine.

 

You should have swapped the pulleys from old to new!!