I'll illustrate it with my experience yesterday. I finally got around to replacing the alternator on my '95 Ford pickup yesterday. While I had the belt off, I didn't bother to check the condition of my tensioner pulley. So with what was a 15 minute repair, I was off to the gas station to top off the tank and go for a short ride. Three miles later I round a corner only to hear a thump as I round it. A quick check of my gauges, and I immediately realized that I threw my belt. I pull over, call my wife and make a quick call to the local O'Reilly to see if they have my belt. They do. Deb pulls up, takes me to the auto parts store, I get the belt, we return, I install it and shut the hood. Well..sort of. It will only catch the safety latch. So now during the three mile drive home I am praying that I don't go into a strong wind, or some boy racer passes me in the opposite lane at breakneck speed. This has happened before so I know the drill. I am now reaching through the grill with my 1/4"ratchet a quarter turn at a time to release the latch assembly. When I say I know the drill, I should have said on to rookie mistake number two. When this happened before, inexplicably the latch bolts worked loose and misaligned enough that the hood would neither open nor close. Now, fifteen years ago, did I bother to maybe put a little blue thread locker on the bolts? Of course not. That would have been 30 seconds more out of my time. I most certainly did this time. So now, after FINALLY getting my hood back up and the latch aligned (and bolts now coated with blue threadlocker), I see what shredded the perfectly good belt. The pulley on my tensioner looked like it had been through a meat grinder (I guess the plastic just got brittle with age because I use the 3/8" drive hole that Ford was generous enough to cast into the tensioner assembly). Now I am BACK at O'Reilly for a pulley. So to recap: Not doing a simple observation of my pulleys, and not using threadlocker on my hood latch bolts 15 yrs. ago turned a fifteen minute R&R into an afternoon. All from rookie mistakes. LESSON LEARNED!!!!!
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