My alternator keeps chewing belts..Please Help!!

It is just the opposite. The voltage regulator is reading potential and increases the voltage to try to overcome the resistance created by the bad ground. A Delco alternator is capable of producing nearly 100 volts. The belt is unable to carry that much force, so the belt stretches and slips over the alternator pully and produces all the black rubber that is in the picture.

 

A lot of people have said the alternator is clearly ****ed or angled. From the picture, it does look that way. However, that could also be the camera angle.

There is obvious misalignment of the belt from that picture, which might be tricking the eye into thinking the belt is straight and the alternator is ****ed.

As someone said earlier, take a paint stick or a yard stick, and put it in the bottom of the grooves of the pulleys, and check the following:
Crank pulley to alternator pulley.
Alternator pulley to water pump pulley
Water pump pulley to crank pulley.

That will tell you definitively which pulley is misaligned.

If you're running a new or rebuilt water pump, there's a good chance it's the water pump pulley mount not being pressed down on the impeller shaft far enough. I learned this on a 283 Chevy a couple years ago, and have seen it on a 440 Mopar and others since.

If you've shimmed your alternator spacing a whole bunch of times, and the problem hasn't gone away, it could very easily be the crank and water pump pulley are not aligned and that's actually what's causing the problem.

-Brad

 

Are you talking about an internally regulated Delco, or the older ones with an external regulator. If internally regulated, is it a one wire, or is it using the external reference lead?

 

The alternator is not straight, as in the face of the pulley is not parallel with the other pulleys. Thats important. I agree to check alt pully width. Another note, I had one doing that and I found out someone had booger welded down inside the pulley I guess to take out slack so I would look for rocks, welds etc in the grove and check the dampner pulley groove that the alt. rides on to see if there are any sharp edges or debris there also. They need to be clean and straight.

 

It was an internally regulated Delco. it was not a one wire unit. The indication that leads me to my conclusion is in post #10 wher he stated that he sanded and painted everything prior to ***embly. There are more electrical problems related to bad grounds than any other cause. It only takes a few minutes to eliminate this problem. Even take a set of jumper wires and connect one end to the alternator and the other end to the battery post. Run the engine up to about 2500 and watch the top of the belt. The rubber is coming off the top of the alternator and is on the side of
the block.

 

Take that tractor pulley off and put 3/8 pulley on it .

 

sorry for the misinformation guys...when the belt is new it rides fairly well but the belt in the picture is about completely gone so it looks much smaller!!!! I plan on swapping the belts and shimming the bottom becuse after looking at the pics and the car again its tlted. Funny how sometimes ya dont see that **** until ya ste back for a second!!!!

 

Is your adjuster bracket touching the cooling blades ?

 

also you might try locating bracket on other side of block