[Idaho335D]

Hello everyone. I am new to the forum and need your assistance. My wife has a 2010 335D and the other night she called me saying her power steering and AC went out on her way home and the low battery indicator in the dash came on but that everything but the AC went back to normal a short ways from home. I was out of town so I did not get to look at it until today but when I opened the hood I found part of the belt that runs the AC compressor coiled up and broken. The serpentine belt was still together and looked to be in perfect condition. The part number on the broken belt is 11287520177. Looking around online I found a replacement for anywhere from $8-$20. I usually do all my own maintenance on my vehicles but figured it wouldn't cost much and wouldn't take long with the right tools so I called a local BMW shop and there quote was $281!! I plan to replace both belts just to be on the safe side since the car is 6 years old and just passed 90k miles. My question is has anyone else had this happen and replaced themselves? The AC belt is a stretch belt so no tensioner to make installation easy. Any advice on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

[Hockey13]

how is your harmonic balancer pully? apparently when it goes out, you lose power steering ac and alternator operation....

[temporaptor]

Im guessing harmonic balancer too.

[kbsilver]

Originally Posted by temporaptor

Im guessing harmonic balancer too.

Make that 3. Did she say anything about smelling burning rubber?

[chau]

Power steering and AC definitely sounds like harmonic balancer related. Their quote of $281... surely that's just labor right? The OEM part alone is ~$400.

[BB_cuda]

Originally Posted by chau

Power steering and AC definitely sounds like harmonic balancer related. Their quote of $281... surely that's just labor right? The OEM part alone is ~$400.

If you look at his wording, that was the quoted cost to change the belt only. When he first wrote, he didn't know about HB being torn up.

Idaho335D, I will add you to a list I've been maintaining along with the 90k miles failure point. You will see another thread come to the top authored my OmahaDZL called something like "Loosing my freekin mind, this car is killing me". There are about 23 people so far and a couple are from the bimmerfest diesel forum.

EDIT: Here is link to that thread
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showth...1254534&page=8

There are 3 threads on this subject so it would be better to continue your dialogue in the other thread so as much learning goes into one place. This helps when another new guy comes asking same question. Hoping this thread doesn't become the 4th "long" one. I have added you to the list even though you hadn't replaced the HB. We are all quite confident that your harmonic damper has torn up. Same tell-tell signs of loosing multiple accessories all on the same serpentine belt. Good Luck

[Idaho335D]

So the harmonic balancer needs to be replaced too? When I was poking around with it yesterday I look at all the pulleys and everything seemed normal including the HB, what exactly goes wrong with it? My wife did mention a small burn rubber smell but I assumed it was from the belt that broke being in contact with the pulleys that were still spinning. There was a small amount of rubber built up that I could see inside and on the HB but it rubbed right off which again made me think it was just from the belt rubbing after it broke.

[chau]

Originally Posted by Idaho335D

So the harmonic balancer needs to be replaced too? When I was poking around with it yesterday I look at all the pulleys and everything seemed normal including the HB, what exactly goes wrong with it? My wife did mention a small burn rubber smell but I assumed it was from the belt that broke being in contact with the pulleys that were still spinning. There was a small amount of rubber built up that I could see inside and on the HB but it rubbed right off which again made me think it was just from the belt rubbing after it broke.

http://www.e90post.com/forums/showpo...&postcount=137 shows the failure on his.