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My dad just had this happen to him on Interstate 80 just east of Utah (a long long way from home). It was a total belt failure with a lot of teeth shearing off at highway speed. The Alfa V6 came to a dead stop and the car coasted to an offramp where luckily there was a hotel! Fortunatly this was his car with non interference pistons so he put on his spare belt and drove away. Still, it's scary. We attributed the failure to age and mileage of the belt. It's certainly not power as the engine was normally aspirated at the time and power wouldn't matter anyway for the belt.

Interesting, I was thinking about heat too, did the belt had any signs of rubbing against something?? excessive tension is ruled out isn't it? maybe just a bad belt?

Barry , it is definately the manufacturing process...maybe the vulcanizing temp was off for a few days???

Looks like shear at weakest point which means poor quality rubber

A few years ago you got "bad" belts.Today these damn things are brilliant.Ive seen engines with the same belt doing aver 300000km,s!!Guys just don't know you have to change these regularly.

Tensions were excellent (Ive built many,many engines..you get the knack for these things after a while..)
Not rubbing against anything either..

Im still hot on temperature,I just don't know how..

Until I can pin down the cause,I'm having sleepless nights..

A few years ago you got "bad" belts.Today these damn things are brilliant.Ive seen engines with the same belt doing aver 300000km,s!!Guys just don't know you have to change these regularly.

Tensions were excellent (Ive built many,many engines..you get the knack for these things after a while..)
Not rubbing against anything either..

Im still hot on temperature,I just don't know how..

Until I can pin down the cause,I'm having sleepless nights..

Bad question here (I know), but how's the motor Barry - all valves or only some? Pistons?

High revs when it broke? Dyno? Road? Idle...

Also, TT or NA...? 156? 164?

TA or 156/147?

Hey Barry,

So you're saying to spoil your day all I have to do is leave a delaminated timing belt on your door step. Maybe leave a note on it which says "It didn't overheat.....muahahahaha"

John,Fernando was driving in mid afternoon traffic,bumper to bumper..3rd gear low revs,funny sound from the exhaust and no power..
Thats when he phoned me and I asked him to turn the motor over..heard bad sounds on the cell line and stopped everything right there..I knew the sound..
Anyhow,Its here with me now and Im busy stripping.Will know on Monday.

As you know from the videos,this engine has been through some endearing times..A whole pile of track events,5th gear limiter cruising,plain hooligan abuse and she expires in such a ladylike fashion...

I thought that the day she goes it would be revving 8k on a downshift through a corner intimidating that Porsche..

She will be back! (I love Arnie...)

Whats your take on the belt John??
Ive never ever in 30 odd years had a belt strip off like this.

Zman,nothing gets to me anymore..Ive come to expect the unexpected..

Oh,and its 164 based in a GTV6...

Fernando, sorry to hear about your m3 eater. Its sure got me a bit worried. My GTA 116 has done 5000kms in three years so I think its due for a chainge on the time 'basis'. Once belt is off I will look for signs of delamination. On another note I heard we are the only country in the world where Alfa had to chainge the service manuals for belt chainges on the 24v motors to 60000km. The reasons were our high altitude combined with low humidity and high dust content in the air blown off our hundreds of mine dumps(major mining industry in SA).

We saw one here that was split like that (but it was also broken at that spot all of the way through...) Hard to tell what came first looking at the belt on that one, that was until I realized that one of the idlers was frozen solid!

How are all of the pulleys?

Ever since then, every 30K miles - without question; belt, tensioner bearing, BOTH idlers AND aux belt, tensioner, tensioner bearing and BOTH idlers, water-pump and T-stat... I don't screw with ANY of it!

What's bizarre is the low odo!

Is that your finger between the ribbed-inside and the backing-outside!?

Also, Chip (here in the US) put a 24 v 164 in his Milano some years back - changed the belt etc and happen to go in there one day to check on something unrelated. He noticed a tooth or so starting to delam - caught it just in time - I think that the mileage was something like 3,500 miles only...

Actually what brand are we talking about here? The 12V belts are made by a few companies (Isoran, Goodyear, Pirelli, etc). How many mfgs. for the 24V's belt, only one? Getting a bit nervous now...

BTW I also had a problem with a guibo which blew up after 1000 miles. New OE Alfa. We found rust on the part where the rubber met the metal insert. My guess is bad batch of donuts where the rubber didn't properly bond or cure or vulcanized etc.

kevin wrote:Ouch! Never seen that. Sheared teeth off before when cam seized on tt motor(bit of silicone stuck in passage). Cant be to much power for belt as Dawie ran the tt at high boost and no probs there. Delamination due to constant heat cycles(bad belt) ?
Out of interest maybe Ben or any other rocket scientists can calculate anyadditional shear from 184kw to 240kw. Might be a factor.

While there would be aditional load on the belt from a bigger cam, I wouldn't think it would cause a delamination failure like that... while I have no direct experience with belt failure modes, I would suspect a belt overload would strip the teeth wholesale or break the main tension web rather than delaminate like that. I'd expect to see that sort of failure through an overspeed on very small pullies, where the heat generated by the belt's hysteresis causes a failure.
I'd put my money on "new old stock" or a dodgy belt.

We see Delco-manufactured belts in after-market boxes, as well as in OEM Alfa/Fiat/Lancia Riccambi packaging...