Bad Gatorback Serpentine Belt Experience

[SeaKayak]

After reading all the raves for the Goodyear Gatorback serpentine belt, I installed one a little under 4,000 miles ago.

Earlier today, I heard strange noises from under the hood and found that the belt was starting to shred apart. Lucky for me, I still had the old belt hanging in the garage and swapping out these belts takes 20 minutes at most.

I don't know if this is a unique occurrence, but I will not be putting another Gatorback on, or one with segmented ribs. Even though the segmentation makes the belts more flexible, I believe the trade-off of endurance is not worth it.

Later, Gator!

 

[sharp4runr]

Yikes! Thanks for posting this as a warning.

 

[greasefingers]

I would ever use anything other than a segmented ribbed belt either from Dayco or Goodyear. I have been using them for years now; on all 4 of my vehicles. There is no trade-off for longevity. The segmented ribbed belts will last as long as or longer than a non- segmented one.

Even the cheapest belts made can last many more times than yours did. Obviously at 4,000 miles, the belt was defective, a pulley is defective, or a sharp foreign object got lodged in the belt???

I change the serpentine belts at 60k miles, but they can easily go to 75 k miles as I forgot to change one once and discovered my mistake at that mileage interval. (it was not the 4runner however)

 

[Even Steven]

Hmmm... I've heard nothing but good things about the Goodyear Gatorback belts....until now!

 

[RickyCRX]

When I bought my 4Runner in '05 (it had 52k miles on it), I replaced the serpentine belt with one of those segmented ones and ran it until 90.3k miles when I did the timing belt. Since the belt had to come off anyway, I had the shop throw on another new one since there wasn't any additional labor and mine was starting to not run as quiet as it used to. The old belt still looked just fine, and I have held onto it as an emergency spare in case something happens to the one on the vehicle.

As somebody else said -- either that one was defective, you have a pad pulley/idler/accessory device, or something got lodged in that one.

Ricky

 

[greasefingers]

Ok this is weird

 

[jharris2]

Ok this is weird

 

[SeaKayak]

There was no evidence that anything got lodged in the belt. The separation was along the side of the belt, in line with the first V-groove. Except for the shredding, the rest of the belt looked pristine.

If debris was the cause, it may have pushed the belt to one side on a pulley and that caused the damage. If this was the case, I would think that a continuous rib would withstand being pushed up against a pulley edge better than a segmented rib. The segmentation might catch the edge easier and slip a belt groove onto the pulley edge, cutting the belt.

I was really disappointed that this happened, because I also heard a lot of good things about the Gatorback and the belt did run quieter than the factory belt it replaced. Part of me wants to try another one, but the fear of getting stranded or doing damage to hoses or wiring from a shredding belt whipping around won't let me do it.

 

[jharris2]

Part of me wants to try another one, but the fear of getting stranded or doing damage to hoses or wiring from a shredding belt whipping around won't let me do it.

Or, keep the original belt in the truck as a backup. I do that, even though I'm using an OEM belt now.

By the way, great avatar!

 

[greasefingers]

I would stay away from the Goodyear

 

[gaslight]

a couple of months ago I put a Gatorback on my wife's Jeep and had problems with it. There was more vibration. You could see the tensioner pulley moving in and out as the belt vibrated or shook. The dealer told her it was the tensioner pulley so I replaced that and it still did the same thing. It was an annoying noise and I wondered how long it would take before the belt jumped off the pulley. I took it off and returned it. Put the old belt back on and no vibration or noise. Problem solved. Belt sucked.

 

[Ynot_clocks]

GatorBack Belts

Not sure why, but it seems most of my problems have been since getting these belts.