Have I Found The Root of All Evil in Glinda?

In my line of maintenance work, when one waits nearly a week to post an update, one has a lot of catching up to do.

Glinda first. Last Thursday morning, while on their drive to school, Glinda threw her nearly new Clark’s fanbelt. I had decided to sleep in after a sleep-challenged night due to the flu, so I was in bed when the dreaded call came in. The lovely Loriann and I drove out I-70 to meet them. I’d grabbed some nitrile gloves and another fanbelt, and I knew there was a 9/16ths inch wrench in Glinda’s glovebox. While the lovely Loriann transported Victoria and Mikhaila the rest of the way to their school, I installed the replacement belt and soon thereafter Glinda was parked in her assigned spot in the school parking lot.

This is the second time in less than three weeks she’s tossed her belt. In my mind the only thing that’s recently changed that could have caused this is I greased the fan bearing on top of the engine. It is possible I applied too much pressure and moved the pulley causing a misalignment.

Victoria drove her around the rest of that day, and as she neared the end of her commute, Glinda started running roughly again. She had to floor the accelerator pedal just to hold 50 mph. I was feeling too ill when she got home to look at things, so I didn’t run right out and investigate. In the meantime, I asked Victoria to drive the Suburban until I could get this problem resolved.

I then went on to ask her to carefully describe exactly what happened when Glinda’s performance plummeted. She related that Glinda was running fine, then right after the lights flickered, she ran roughly. “The lights flickered?” I asked her. “Yep,” she replied. So the rough running may be the result of an electrical issue? As the misshapen wheels in my mind continued to turn, I formulated the following theory.
An intermittent failure in the alternator causes a high load on the fanbelt sucking power from the engine and stretching the fanbelt to the point that it just flopped off. The excessive alternator load is also causing the fuel mileage reduction. Could a simple fix to the electrical system really solve all Glinda’s ills?

Late Friday I was able to investigate my theory. Sure enough there were electrical problems. The nut that retains the positive connection at the back of the alternator had stripped so the ring terminal was not being held tightly in place. This could certainly cause a high resistance and, under load, the alternator would have to work much harder to overcome this. Then I found the crimped connection of the main positive wire from the battery had failed. It was probably just barely in place when all my moving stuff around caused it to come completely apart. A new, slightly smaller nut solidified the positive connection, while some quick cuts and a new crimped connector made good that path of ions.

I’ll be following the tension on the fanbelt daily now to ensure it’s not still be stretched.