Greetings after 18 months of ownership...

Mine
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Thank you both, now I understand. In a way, I guess a single belt has an advantage, at least if the the belt breaks, the alt. light will turn on to indicate that both alt and wp are not working.

 

Ok I see, like you said the AC belt doesn’t count, got it.

 

To make a point here and not everyone is going to agree but on the two belt system the water pump belt requires an idler for tension. The idler is a small pulley with a bearing and outside of old age of the belt itself it is the single most common cause of belt failures. So all I'm saying is that if you have a single belt system I wouldn't go out of my way to convert to the two belt unless you are having some sort of recurrent issue. This is what was stated in the service bulletin.

 

I did not know that

 

It has to because there is no way to alter the distance between the water pump and crank pulleys. The alternator is on a pivot mount so tension is set by adjusting it and no idler is needed. I mention it because the only belt failure I have experienced was the A/C drive which also uses an idler tensioner and it was the idler bearing that seized and caused the failure.

 

Paul, in almost 15 years of ownership of my 84 QV, I never had problem with the single belt but if I consider upgrading it to the two belts, besides the additional tensioner bearing , wouldn’t I need to change the crankshaft pulley with the extra groove to accommodate the second belt?

 

Yes and while there was a factory service bulletin and kits were produced to make the alteration you will have a hard time finding the parts. You will also have to alter the position of the alternator to align with the new second pulley but it’s possible to do it if you really want to.

 

My "kit" was sourced from two cars in Rutland's wrecking yard. It took several months to find a second donor car and the last bit of everything needed to make the change. And this was about 16 years ago.