The belt is breaking down and twisting.  When it reaches sped, it crawls off
the pulley.  Replace the belt, and get a Gates brand belt.

It should be fairly tight.  Enough so that you can pull on it with
reasonable force and it will deflect around 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch.

Karl Wolz

Karl Wolz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob MacLeod" <macleod@CVRTI.UTAH.EDU>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 10:45 PM
Subject: power steering V-belt falls off

> Folks,
>
> I checked the archives and cannot find anything about what to do when a
> V-belt starts falling off?  I had all my belts replaced last year and then
> suddenly last week, towards the end of a four-day trip to southern Utah,
> the belt that drives the power steering motor fell off.  I placed it back
> on, tightened it up, and it came off within a half hour.  Over the next
two
> days, I repeated the process several times and I cannot get it to stay on,
> even when tightening it pretty hard.  (BTW, I was not able to find the
> official tension setting for this belt--can someone send me this info?).
>
> When the belt is on and I look down at it from the top, there is some
> slight misalignment (and I do mean slight) of the pulley on the power
> steering motor--the plane of the pulley is twisted ever so slightly
> relative to the plane of the belt (and main drive pulley).  However, it is
> not clear to me one could alter the plane of the pulley.  The pulley of
the
> power steering motor turns fine, no wobble I can see.  This is an '86
> Vanagon Westy with only 75k miles.  Engine looks very clean, no problems,
> and I just had it checked out by my local mechanic.  I can take it back to
> him about this problem, but it seems like something within my abilities so
> I wanted to try it first before going to the shop.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions!!!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob
> Salt Lake City, Utah
> '86 Westy (red)
>