What a crappy way to start my vacation.

[CROOZ1N]

What a crappy way to start my vacation-FOLLOW UP!!

:W2 pm On a Saturday,236 miles from home 35 miles to the beach and the car starts sounding as though its dragging something. I check all the guages ...OK we pull over shut it down and pop the hood. Oil checked OK . Trans fluid OK PS .. Ok no fluids leaking underneath. Start her back up and noise is still there but now its kinda coming and going. I try locating it and see the belt kinda jumping . I then notice the pully on the alternator is jumping up and down. I pull into the Food lion across the street and ask a guy about an Advance or NAPA. Advance is 4 miles down. Start the Vette up and it goes from one set of parking lines to the next and dies. It wont even start. !! The bearing locked slap up in the thing. (Or at least I hope thats what it is.)

So the guy I talked to actually took me to the Advance. No part -- None in any of the OPEN stores. NAPA closed of course. Chevy dealer closed of course. So The guy behind the counter said he can get me one tomorrow. I said ok get it here. Now what do i do about the vette in Tabor city NC? Well I didnt want to leave it so the guy from advance called another guy who came up from Conway with his rollback and took it to my condo at N.Myrtle for 140 bucks Cheap i think...
So here I sit hopefully I'll get it fixed tommorow or at least fixed enuff to get me back home next week.

Everyone I came in contact with during this was super nice. The people at the Advance, the guy in the parking lot ,the lady in the Foodlion. Even people that we talked with while waiting on the rollback.

Thankfully we had some friends 30 minutes behind us that we are sharing the condo with. They were able to rearange the contents of the 2 cars to get my wife in with them while I road with the Tow driver. Also super nice.

So hopefully I'll follow up tomorrow with some better news.

Hey it aint all bad I am at the beach!!:L

 

[vett boy]

I hope tommorrow is better for ya.

 

[JAKE]

"The bearing locked slap up in the thing". What does that mean?
How are you making out?

Jake

 

[CROOZ1N]

That means that the bearings locked up (in the alternator. Sorry if that wasn't made plain)and stopped the shaft from rotating freely. I guess it was a blessing that I wasn't going along at 60 when that happened or it probably would have shredded the belt and might have took out something else.
I got the part and a few tools and had it changed out in about 30 minutes. It seems to be charging OK with and without the air and accessories on.

 

[G Winter]

Glad to see it was something easy to repair away from home. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.

Glenn

 

[Toms007]

So glad that you got it fixed relatively easy.

 

[Ugolino]

The exact same thing happened to me once in my old c4. Strange sound coming from the alternator, I look at the back of the casing, and the bearing seal is falling apart, and there's like three little bearings left inside the thing, valiantly trying to keep the alternator running. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, what a cheap piece of junk, it was only a few months old. Where in the world do these alternators come from.

 

[JAKE]

That means that the bearings locked up (in the alternator. Sorry if that wasn't made plain)and stopped the shaft from rotating freely. I guess it was a blessing that I wasn't going along at 60 when that happened or it probably would have shredded the belt and might have took out something else.
I got the part and a few tools and had it changed out in about 30 minutes. It seems to be charging OK with and without the air and accessories on.

I had the same problem two years ago when I was more than a thousand miles from home. I ended up changing mine on the side of the road.

After that I started carrying a spare alternator in the hatch when far from home.

Glad you're up and running again. T50-PLUS on that torx bit - Summit has 'em but no place else that I checked. AutoZone, O"Reilly's, Sears, etc never heard of them.

Jake

 

[B17Crew]

After that I started carrying a spare alternator in the hatch when far from home.

Jake

Different part, but the same vein thinking...

I had a ’93 that had the ribbed pulley belt design. I used to keep the old one that I had changed out in a bag in the rear storage well. I started doing this because a service advisor at a Chevy dealership said it’d be a good idea to hang onto the old one because not every dealer had the ribbed version in stock. It could take a day or two to come in. If you’re traveling, it’s something you can have put on and be back on the road a little sooner.

B17Crew

 

[CROOZ1N]

I understand carrying a few items but at the rate you guys are talking I'll soon have to get a trailer just for parts and tools to carry along! LOL
Heck if I'm gonna do that i might have just as well bought a mustang.

As for the T50 plus, That must be a GM thing the T50 I used got me by and I didnt think it was a sloppy fit but I'll recheck it once home.

The weather has been great. we had a bit of rain yesterday with the threat of hail so i moved the vette under the building into the covered parking area. The only thing with that though is the building we are in is being painted and where you have to park under is in line with where the painting is going on. So I had to move her again this morning shortly after they re-started painting.
They had covered the Vette to protect it before I got up to move it so I was appreciative of that.

 

[B17Crew]

I understand carrying a few items but at the rate you guys are talking I'll soon have to get a trailer just for parts and tools to carry along! LOL

:L :L


Actually, the C4 is a very reliable Corvette. I wouldn’t worry too much about a parts trailer load of backup in case something goes kurpluey.

B17Crew

 

[SPANISHVETTS]

I blew the gearbox in Thunder 900 miles from home last month

'knew I would never get it fixed in Spain so managed to get on the ferry to England with just 1st and 3rd.

Tom Falconer at Claremont Corvette sent me to GM automatic re-builders who had me back on the road in one day.

He rebuilt the 700R4 with Raybestors heavy duty parts, installed a 2200 rpm TC and had me back on the road in 1 day.

The shop foreman told me that if it had been a Jaguar, BMW or Benz, all Euro cars that it would have taken him 3 days to get the parts.

DAMN as big a pain in the butt as he is you gotta love the General and his C4 must be the cheapest performance car ever built to keep on the road.

 

[CROOZ1N]

Ok and now for the rest of the story.... (Sorry Paul)
Time for checkout on Saturday. everything goes well there.
My sister who lives in Charlotte NC asked us to maybe stop by onour way back home to spend the night and visit as Mom and Dad are going to be there and its Mothers day weekend. So we have a nice ride to Charlotte we dint get lost even though we kinda took the route with all the stop lights. Anyway my brother in law helps me clean up the Vette and we get all the salt spray off and get her nice and shiny. We ended up having a nice visit and take off Sunday afternoon about 12:30. We decide we're gonna take 73 to catch I-85 at Concord. We're going along and the battery light comes on. I see the voltage start to drop and finally get someplace I can pull over and pop the hood. I'm thinking maybe I didn't get the battery lead tight enough in Myrtle beach so I start by looking at that but then i notice the serpentine belt is no longer on the alternator. Further checking reveals that the tensioner pulley is no longer attached it has come off and is sitting in the frame just below its rightful spot. I remove it and see that the inside is all mangled up. Whats left on the bolt will still rotate so i don't know why this happened at the time.
So were about 26 miles from my sister and I call her and tell her were broke down. Her and my Dad were able to find a pulley and bring it to us. Once we had the part it took about 20 minutes to install and put the belt back on.
So now we're again on our way and about 10 minutes onto I-85 and the check engine light comes on. Oh crap!! Pucker factor goes high! All gauges look good so we keep on going. After 15 or so minutes the check engine light goes back out and were good to go. Pucker factor at minimum level but still on alert!
We finally make it to the Roanoke city limits and my sister calls. She said that damaging hail and tornadic activity had come thru the area where we were broke down.
We get home and I unload everything out of the vette and it starts to rain again. I manage to get her backed into the garage and go get a beer.

Maybe I'll take the truck to the beach next year.....