My Car Has a Mystery Disease! HELP!

[MX3Chick]

Ok, belts were squealing....thought Id change the alternator belt and the a/c belt. Long story short....it keeps eatting belts (like 4 now). Well, there is nothing wrong with the alternator...charges fine, cant seem to find any other problems. It is with a mechanic now (family friend so no, Im not getting raped for the 4 days that hes had it) and he has taken it to 2 other mechanics and a guy who rebuilds alts, no one can find a problem with it.

Can anyone give me suggestions? Im at my wits end with this car, any help is much appriciated!

[torpedan]

Operator error.

My money is on that you were over tightening the belts. Its some thing really simple that can eat belts it can also kinda give the engine a super charger sounding whine sometimes too

[MX3Chick]

I had a mechanic put them all on, nothing Id do myself (yeah, chalk one up for the girlfriend with nice car has her boyfriend do the work category).

Do you think a mechanic would mess it up 4 times? He'd loosen and tighten it tons of times. It would last 4 days and then, bam, the belt would be gone.

Oh and no sc-like whine.

[Night MX-3]

hey I had the same problem a few months ago...

My belts kept getting ate, sometimes only from the right side and everyone thought it was my alt but there was nothing wrong with the alt..
are you losing any water out of your bottle at all?? Because what was making my squeeking noise was my water pump. You can hope that its the water pump belt..but mine wasnt. I had to buy a new water pump and it sucked. Might want to check that out

[torpedan]

Yeah from here it will tend to get sticky. You need to be sure all the pullies are not warped out of a very modest tolerance and that they align straight. Be sure all the groves match and that all assemblies spin freely.

[DVH]

I can almost be a 100% sure that you are not using original MAzda belts....well , surprisingly, thats the problem, take it to mazda and get them to do it.......now i know what your gonna say, mazda charges too much and why are their belts different. Answer, i know mazda charges alot, but you do want them fixed right amd replacing them 5 times, i think mazda is cheaper than that. try and see what happens...nuthin to loose.....they' ll fix them for free if they do squeel or break again.

[Buff1110]

dvh is definately correct. i went through my belts every month bc i was using generic ones, then i bought the oem ones from the dealer, cost a lil more than generic ones but i installed them almost a year ago and still no problems. the mazda belts are thicker and a bit wider.

[torpedan]

I use gates and have had no problems. The only problems i had was when the pully was out of alignment because we used the MX3 alternator on a BPD