1996 SSEi eating belts.
 

My neighbor has a 96 SSEi that keeps eating belts. You can drive the car for a few days, but by the end of the week the belts will be totally destroyed. I haven't seen the car personally, my dad told me about it. I said it was probably a bad tensioner or idler pulley since there are so many of those damn things on the S/C belt. Think this is what the problem is?

That's the best place to start looking. Make sure the tensioner assembly on that belt still feels tight when changing belts. Changing the idler pulley on it might be a good cheap thing to try. Is the belt shred always on one edge or the other?

I guess that the belt actually isn't breaking, it just flies off when you drive it. lol. It stays on for a little while but will fly off everytime you drive it. I wonder if they're just putting it on wrong. May have to take a look myself. anything specific to look for?

Sounds like either a siezed pulley bearing and or something wrong with the tensioner springs.. the second sounds more feasible if it just POPS off during driving.. but more info would help.. and there's way too many drunken Gearheads here that can give you better advice.. how much force is needed when they pushed the tensioner back??

:offtopic:

Is there a way of finding out what the book says?? maybe a way of looking into it via torque wrench or something?? humm.. just thinkin out loud

I could do the torque wrench comparison later if that would help. We'd have to know if custom88 has a torque wrench available at the other end. I really buy the broken tensioner spring.