P/S pulley ate radiator hose

[VINMAN]

Was riding along this weekend, felt a shudder in the steering wheel, a few loud squeals, then a ton of steam!
Seem the p/s pump shaft broke slipped out of the pump and tore into the lower radiator hose. Had a nice trail of coolant and steering fluid behind the car.
Aint nothin better than spending New Years Eve watching your car get winched onto a flat bed.

Ever happen to anyone on here??

[Macfreak007]

fans got mine once, sucks, PS belt got my PS hose once too becareful after you get done working on the car to check the clearances of the belts

[AFJuvat]

No, but I had a shreaded alternator belt take out my PS pump.

AFJuvat

[toolboy62]

oh man do I have a great "collateral damage" story. Well, it seems great now, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Anyway... those of you who regularly read my posts (heh, that sounds almost arrogant doesn't it, like I'm a columnist or something that you should read every Saturday) know that I'm also into old Studebakers. Well, the SDC (Studebaker Drivers Club) holds its "international" meet in a different city every year, this year it was in Charlotte. I really wanted to have my red '62 there, but it just didn't happen - was working too much to get it finished in time. So I hitched a ride down with an older guy that lives around here that has a '63 Hawk with the R-2 (supercharged) motor and 4-speed. That's a nice consolation for not getting to take my own car! Anyway the drive down was great - took the back roads the whole way and the ONLY issue that we discovered (actually I did) is that the stupid thing wouldn't run worth a crap once you get into the secondaries. Of course I found this out while trying to pass some geriatric slowpoke on a 2-lane section of either US-1 or US-301 (I forget which, but you get the idea)

ANYWAY - had a great time at the meet, concours was thursday AM, awards banquet was friday night, what to do with all that time in between? A local guy had set it up so that we could all head out to a drag strip in Mooresville and play around for a couple hours since there was no need to keep the cars all shiny. So of course we go because there's few things in life more fun than flogging the crap out of some ridiculously over-detailed vintage machinery. Anyway my friend takes 3-4 passes but he still can't get it to run right, he's playing with the carb, fuel filter, fuel pump, etc. etc. etc. between passes. I take a camera and head down to the tree to take some pics while he's playing. Finally he makes a run that doesn't sound like complete crap but seemed kinda slow. Then he disappears for a while and finally I see him walking down the hill towards me from the parking lot. I assume that he's got it mostly sorted out and wants me to take a few runs to see what I think. Um, not quite - he yells down "c'mon up here and see what I just broke."

uh-oh, that didn't sound good.

I hike up to the car and it's now missing the alternator belt, the power steering belt, and the upper radiator hose has come off the water manifold. I guess either the hose blew off and soaked the belts, or one of the belts came off at high RPM and smacked off the hose. Either way, we needed two new belts, a hose clamp, and a lot of water. So I borrow some buckets and head down to the tower for some water while he starts pulling the shredded belts out of the engine compartment. Amazingly, the big, hard-to-find supercharger belt didn't break or come off which is good because it probably would have torn some **** up, but bad because now we have to take it off to put the other belts back on, which is a PITA.

My friend is messing with the belts from the passenger side while I am on the driver's side trying to get the upper radiator hose hooked back up. All of a sudden I see green smoke coming out from under the vinyl service cover that I'm leaning on... I immediately step back and whip it off thinking that there's more fluids leaking somewhere, possibly brake fluid? (the brake booster is right in that area on a Hawk) well, no... the wiring harness is now on fire. Apparently one of us (could have been either one, really, as my friend was working on the alternator at that exact moment) bumped something electrical and Something Bad happened. My friend displayed enough presence of mind to grab the main feed wire on the starter solenoid and rip it off, causing nothing worse than a little burn on his thumb. The car, however, didn't fare so well - the main feed was burned all the way back to the ammeter, and everything under the hood was Extra Crispy between the firewall and the horn relay.

This is our ride home, remember...

So after all that the guy that set up the whole dragstrip thing offers to run me to the parts store to get some new belts, which we do... (side note: you think getting parts for a Porsche is fun, try an R-2 Hawk. "yes, I need a set of belts for a '63 Hawk with power steering and a supercharger. Yes, it's all stock. Yes, the belts are all different with the blower. No, the blower isn't aftermarket. A Studebaker wasn't made by anyone else." ad nauseum...) and also offers the use of his shop should we need it. Now his business is custom spark plug wires and other electrical stuff for NASCAR teams, so the response was obviously "hell yeah!" There's just one problem - he's in the middle of moving his business from one shop to another and everything is boxed up. Have to tackle this Saturday morning. So we score some lamp cord from somewhere, disconnect everything from the Hawk and hotwire it straight from the battery to the coil. Drive over to the new shop with a car in front of and behind us so noboby can see that we don't have any lights, signals, etc... hitchhike back to the hotel in Charlotte for the awards banquet, get up the next AM and hitchhike back to the shop... where Brian has brought over several spools of wire in assorted gauges and colors, several sizes of heat shrink, lots of crimp connectors, several heat guns, electrical tape, strippers, cutters, crimpers etc. etc. etc. - amazing! So we grab some razor blades and start dissecting the melted mess, everything that looked OK we just slid long lengths of heat shrink over and shrunk it down, anything real bad we cut out and replaced. Started about 10 AM and amazingly enough had a running car about 2:30, even counting a break for lunch (Brian stopped back with some Chick-Fil-A about 1 O'clock. what a great guy. While we were there, another dead Stude showed up - a really pretty Golden Hawk that supposedly had a fresh engine rebuild, but the builder forgot to include oil pressure...) So we threw it all back together, said "thanks Brian, you're a great guy and we really appreciate this but we can't really stay any longer" and burned rubber in the general direction of Maryland.

The ride home was great... my friend drove most of the way home which was fine by me 'cause he was holding about 75-80 the whole way and I feel a little uncomfortable driving someone else's really nice old car like that, but the car didn't miss a beat. Was cool as heck firing up 301 through A.P Hill in the dark too with the windows down and that nice V-8 sound.... didn't get home until about midnight, boy were we tired by then!

But anyway, let that be a lesson to you. When you're 9 hours away from home, don't try to burn your ride home to the ground, you'll just make more work for yourself. But if you must, it's a good idea to do it when there's a bunch of car guys standing around.

nate