Driving in an old car.

Hello folks,

As usual this Sunday I went over to a friends house to get the Sunday paper which she graciously saves for me. It saves me a couple of bucks don't you know.

Anyway, as I was driving over there I hear a thwap, thunk and suddenly my power steering is not working. Well since the car was still driving I decided to continue to my destination. Luckily I am still pretty strong so I was able to steer with difficulty. When I got to my friends house I popped the hood and guess what, the serpentine belt has broken. Fortunately I did not turn the engine off, because I knew that I no longer had an alternator so I was running on the battery.

I closed the hood, got the newspaper returned to the car and headed straight back to home. As I was driving back I called my good friend Robert and explained the situation to him and asking for his help. I requested that he pick up the necessary belt on his way over so that with his help we could put on the new belt.

My car is a 1994 Plymouth voyager minivan with 226000+ miles on it, and this will make the fifth belt I have had to replace. I have lost track of how many sets of tires I have put on it. Oh! I bought the car with about 110,000 miles on it.

When Robert arrived we got to work on installing the belt which entailed jacking it up, removing the right front tire and removing the undercarriage splash shield which then allowed us access to all the pulleys. Unfortunately, we ran into a major snag because the belt diagram, usually located under the hood was missing, and the one in the Haynes shop manual was wrong.

So we had to put everything away, lock garage and go to the parts store to get a new air conditioning belt, a diagram of the belt, and a can of heavy duty hand cleaner.

Returning home we proceeded to get the belts mounted, proper tensioning done and engine started. Everything worked fine and we proceeded to replace wheel, and splash shield. All told it took about an hour and a half, including the trip to the parts store.

I used to enjoy working on cars a heck of a lot, but at my age it is a bit harder to get up and down off the ground and to bend over into the engine compartment.

Once again, thank you Robert.

God Bless Us everyone, the gahillbilly.




"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"