Request for info: Power steering belts

[Deleted]

My power steering belt is past its best. I can't find a replacement part so I'm looking at universal drive belts from companies such as Bearing King (http://www.bearing-king.co.uk/) who seem to offer a wide variety of sizes of generic belt. Hopefully they will have something of the right size, but I was wondering if there were any other sources for belts that people have used and trust, that I could also look at?

Any potential leads welcome.

My biggest problem is that the belt on my car is as slack as grandma's knicker elastic and also has a massive lump in it where I suspect it has been cut'n'shut from a bigger belt ... so I'm probably going to have to buy a number of belts at various sizes close to and up to the circumference on my car currently, in the hope I get a nice snug fit off one of them. Therefore I'm ideally looking for someone who offers lots of size increments and at a reasonable price!!!

[MrSpeedy]

I use industrial belt suppliers for all my belts, both for work and domestic.

Any reputable supplier should be able to measure the length of your original (if it's still in one piece) and supply you with a replacement

[mattrb]

Jan 12, 2015 16:05:02 GMT MrSpeedy said:

I use industrial belt suppliers for all my belts, both for work and domestic.

Any reputable supplier should be able to measure the length of your original (if it's still in one piece) and supply you with a replacement

This^^

I was going to say much the same thing.

[Frankenhealey]

Whip the belt off and see if it's got any numbers left on it. If it's a V-belt measure the top width, depth and outside length (use a dressmaking tape for this). If it's a PolyVee belt do exactly the same and count the number of ribs. PM me with the info and I'll tell you what it is. Seeemples

[Frankenhealey]

^^^^^^

Or if that's too much effort then make, model and year and I'll look it up in my "Boys Big Book of Belts"

[colnerov]

Hi, It will be a 'V' belt, in either 10mm or 13mm width but I would guess that it is 13mm. Belts are cataloged by their circumference in mm. Remove the belt, close up the pump on its adjustment, get a tape rule and go round the pulleys the way the belt does and take the measurement in mm. Then go to a motor factors and ask for the belt closest to that size. As it's 13mm? I would try a commercial motor factors because they may have a wider choice of sizes.

Colin

[Deleted]

Cool, cheers for the info you lot. It will be the weekend before I can get to the car but I'll come back with any info if I can't find a suitable belt.

[Little eddie]

Hi mate

Get me a reg and i'll tell you what part number you need. We deal with Gates and i work for a motorfactors.

[Deleted]

Ah okay great, if you have time Eddie that would be fantastic.

Its a series 3, 1960, Humber Super Snipe. Registration XNV200.
To be honest I doubt the reg will come up on system but I'd appreciate knowing what you get back. I've already tapped it in to the Motor Factors website search and it didn't recognise it.

What I really need is to get hold of a Rootes parts catalogue for the vehicle, but my car has lots of non-standard mods so even that isn't going to be 100% accurate.

Anyway, if you have a more comprehensive database than the publicly available one I'd love to know if you could get a reference number as it will be a common part across numerous Rootes vehicles I imagine.

Cheers! Owe you one.

[Little eddie]

Hi

According to our books if yours is the 3 litre then the belt you need is:

Gates 9385

Dayco 17385

Most decent factors should be able to supply either of these 2 or at least cross reference them. Hope this helps.

[Deleted]

Yeah, 3 litre it is. Wow, that's fantastic Eddie. Much obliged to you. I'll get on to it.

Owe you one !

: )

[Deleted]

ERMAGERD.

Belt squeal. Is there any sound more insane-making than a squealing belt?

I've got a car that makes an awesome low rumbling noise, and it's just the right amount of loud, and now its drowned out completely by GGREEWHEHWHEHWGEGWGERLWLLWRHWHELW.

I checked out those belt refs at motorfactors yesterday Eddie but neither were the right ones unfortunately. It's highly likely I don't have the original Humber steering kit on, because the belt I need is about 10mm wide and those ones you referred to are 17mm wide. But the good folks at EBC in Saltdean had a look through their stock and we found an 11mm wide toothed belt that was about the right length (still slightly too long as it happens) and would sit easily inside the pulley wheels, So I bought that, took it home and fitted it.

It works, and my power steering can be relied on again, but my god it's a screamer. So it's only on temporarily and at least I have some measurements to aim for now. I imagine that because it's 11mm it's riding the walls of the pulley wheels as opposed to connecting with the valleys, and that's what's making is squeal as much as it is. Also, the teeth make parking speed steering feintly notchy like I'm clicking quietly into turns.

So now I need to get back on to EDC and order up a few different lengths of 10mm toothless belts.

If not, I'm going to go insane listening to the screams from under the hood. It drove me so mad when I was driving home that I couldn't even park up properly I was so desperate to cut the engine. I just left it at 30degrees to the kerb and went for a little walk to recover hahaha.

Belt squeal really kills the joy of a nice sounding car.

The belt came off my car was so worn out and deformed its a wonder it went round at all. It must have got stuck at some point because just one patch of it was worn almost through. It was twisted as well so sometimes the inside touched the wheels, so etines a side, sometimes the outside. It looked like a ring of used black chewing gum.

[colnerov]

Hi, the belt should run on the walls, not the bottom of the valley. If it is touching the bottom of the valley that is why you have squeal. Try and get a 13m belt so it runs higher up the walls.

Colin

[DavidB]

Jan 17, 2015 15:56:29 GMT Little eddie said:

Hi

According to our books if yours is the 3 litre then the belt you need is:

Gates 9385

Dayco 17385

Most decent factors should be able to supply either of these 2 or at least cross reference them. Hope this helps.

In case you didn't know - all belts have lengths in their part number - 9385, would be 385mm, and so will 17385.

I had to find a belt for my Astra which had had air con and power steering removed, I used a piece of string wrapped around all the pulleys and measured the piece of string - then went to my friendly motor factors and borrowed every belt they had in roughly that size.



I went through about 16 belts before I found the correct one, lol! '6PK' part of this is the amount of ribs.

[Deleted]

By the time I'd left Motorfactors I'd figured out the refs were for width and length, but I didn't know beforehand. I think what I have now is very close. It needs to be a wee bit shorter, and smooth not toothed. I ordered up about five different variations of belts last night, so hopefully one of them will work out right. I'm close to a solution.

There was a point where I thought the squeal was going to die off. I always found on my Bedford van that a new alternator belt would squeal for a few hours then go quiet... which seems to be the opposite of what should happen. For a brief 20 minutes on Saturday it settled down apart from when I accelerated hard. Then I came back louder than before.

Damned noise.

Cheers for all the info and advice here. Even having a couple of reference numbers to start with on Saturday helped even though they didn't turn out to be right for my car (I stress 'my car' as opposed to 'Series 3 Humbers' as they are probably correct references for a period correct car).

[DavidB]

Make sure any of the pulleys aren't misaligned or bearing is on it's way out - the alt on my Starion was somehow not correct or the bearing was going. It went thought six belts and was only cured by a new alternator.
That anti-slip spray is good for a couple of days.

[colnerov]

Hi, can I clarify a couple of points raised? A new belt will stretch after a brief period in service and will need re adjusting. A squealing belt is slipping and if left to slip will get hot and sticky and grip better which is why it appears to go away, until as you say when you accelerate hard because the engine speed is picking up quicker that the belt can cope with. Toothed belt were introduced for the alternator pulleys to ease their path round the smaller diameter, and so shouldn't make any difference to your application. A little bit of rust on the walls of the pulley will tear a belt to pieces as can antislip products. Hope this helps.

Colin

[Deleted]

Jan 26, 2015 14:53:54 GMT colnerov said:

A new belt will stretch after a brief period in service and will need re adjusting.

Therein lies my biggest problem. The belt I purchased was a lot smaller in length than the one that was on the car, but it still had too much play even I shunted the power steering pulley assembly to its furthest point. It has about 15mm of play between pulley wheels... so I don't have any more adjustment room left. I need one that is probably about 20mm-25mm shorter than what I now have, and hopefully that will resolve the screaming heebeejeebies and allow me some adjustment. The belt that I took off was so long that it was possible to squeeze the two sides of it together midway between the pulleys and almost touch them. I think it had come off a 19th century traction engine.

I've ordered smooth belts now purely because the belt that was originally on was smooth, and although my power steering is now working perfectly well, it does have a slight feeling of notchy/incremental jerks to the turn at very low parking speeds (very feint, but there). I can only assume this is something to do with the teeth: If the belt isn't the correct fit, they may have some kind of effect they're not intended to have.

I'll see how I get on with the five alternatives I've ordered, and if I still get a squeal I will order the next width up and see how I get on with that.


and then I might rip the power steering out completely and just use my arms to steer, like a real man.

[Deleted]

(I might need to fit an old ship's wheel to get round car parks though)

[Deleted]

In the early 80's I was into the old CB Radio craze and me and my dad used to drive around in his Datsun Laurel meeting up with local CBers. One bloke we became good friends with had a Morris Marina Coupe that he'd customised. It was jacked up at the back, slammed at the front, and had blue candy flake paint, Cragar style wheels and incredibly fat white letter tyres. It looked awesome. There was nothing else like it around locally. He was getting on a bit though and he found it hard to turn the car at slow speeds because of the mega fat wheels at the front. It either didn't have power steering, or the power steering no longer worked, I don't know. He was a shed-level engineer and he'd done a lot of the work on the car himself. One thing he'd done which was one half genius and two halves insanity, was to create a series of fold-away extender handles that were fitted to the rim of his steering wheel. They were hinged so they folded into the centre of the wheel, but when he wanted to manouvre the car in a tight space he could fold them out, in sequence so that they didn't hit anything, and they would give him extra purchase on the steering wheel. I remember them as being about the same length as the diameter of the steering wheel. He had old bicycle handle grips on the end of each one. He'd manouvre parking spaces using them in the empty space between the gear stick and the windscreen. Sometimes he'd have his window down and cruise along in 'bike handlebar fashion' with one had jutting out the side window.

It looked a bit like a ship's wheel. Daft old curse word.

Edit: I should probably also add that he had a very very small custom car steering wheel fitted as well, hence the need for the extra purchase.