the automotive disaster of the decade of the week

thursday was a bad day to own a grey e46 bmw…

…got a surprise call from shane asking what it meant when the battery light came on. my answer was “belt or alternator”, but his steering wasn’t stiff so we went with the latter.

ten hours later, when i left the ufc’s place, my battery light came on.

fuck me.

mine was the first one – the belt. some of you may remember i went through this not too long ago…like ninety days ago. back then the bearings in the idle pulley locked up, ‘causing the belt to part melt the tensioner pulley, so i just replaced both along with the belt which had destroyed itself in the process.

this time the tensioner failed, literally coming apart:

(this is all supposed to be one piece, but this is how it came off the car)

and thus half melting the idle pulley:

(proper size pulley on right, what i pulled off the car on the left)

and again, the belt trashed itself. not fun. on the upside the guys at autozone know me, and i got all parts for free without even fronting the old ones as my car was fifty miles away at the ufc’s. i needed that specialty tool set again, but this time acquired it from a mechanic at bmw of austin who’s mother-in-law gets her tattoo work done from us (how’s THAT shit for convenient?) and thought i had it made. got all apart, all destroyed shit out, and then started in on putting the new shit in. first the tensioner, then the idler, which rubbed like fuck on the tensioner. i tried washers to try and fix to no avail, so i just took that back and got another one…which also rubbed. at that point i knew i HAD to get to the shop or lose a good chunk of money for the evening, so i went in, once again taking the ufc’s ride (thanks again, babe) and the next morning swapped out the tensioner.

bingo.

then everything went well together, and all was well…at least on that issue. hope i get more than three months out of this wave of shit!