Good Morning,
It was just a little after three in the afternoon while coming down Recker Road and a little over a mile from home when from under the front of the black 2006 Scion Xb, there came a sound as if a large snake had decided to commit suicide by jumping into the path of the speeding vehicle. It soon became apparent that it probably wasn’t a snake after all as the “idiot” lights on the dash started to come on. First the ALT light, then BATT light, which were followed shortly after, by the air inside of the cab getting rather warmish and finishing with the TEMP light. Just in time, home and in the garage with the bonnet (hood) up, the situation became obvious. The serpentine belt that once assiduously traveled around the crank shaft pulley, alternator pulley, air conditioner pump pulley, and water pump pulley in its infinite loop had quite suddenly and without giving proper notice, left for what must have been greener pastures.
That’s when I got the call. “Senior, I’ve got a problem. It looks like I have a broken belt on the Xb. I may need your help to find one.” Well that’s what dads are for, or at least one of the reasons. Following numerous calls to a plethora of different auto parts houses, one is found and so we toddle off.
13 miles round trip to our friendly Checker’s Auto Parts Store. 40 minutes later we arrive back at the garage and the waiting XB, new belt in hand, full of enthusiasm and without much of a clue as how to put this thing on, other than not wanting to pay the dealer $200 for the job. Besides, how difficult can it be to change a stinking belt? Shucks we can figure out anything…No Fear. (Ignorance is bliss!)
It looks pretty simple, just loosen a couple of bolts on the Alternator and slide the belt on after weaving it through all them pulleys right down there. Well, on second thought, it looks like that front wheel needs to come off because we can’t get to the bottom pulleys otherwise. Ok…So where is the car jack? Well, where else would it be, but under the drivers seat and after a quick search, the crank to operate it, was found cleverly hidden in the back under a panel. Makes sense to me. The car is jacked up, CMU block for safety and the wheel is off. Ok and while you are at it, it looks like that lower shroud is goanna have to come off too. Check. Now we can see some stuff.
20 minutes later we finally have the alternator bolts loose. I’m pretty sure by this time that they use high torque air tools at the Scion factory and also put Loctite on the threads. The “breaker bar” has become our close friend and I’m starting to mumble something about a Japanese factory worker’s mother.
Ok now, things are ready for the belt. Around and under the crank pulley, under the air conditioner pump pulley up and over the alternator pulley and back down under the water pump pulley…Wait a minute…it won’t fit around the water pump pulley. Alas, something isn’t right here. Twenty minutes goes by and no matter how hard we tried, it just will not fit. Well obviously, it’s too short and we need a longer one. (Where have I heard that one before?)
I know…let’s see if we can find the old belt and compare it with what we need to get. Logical huh? A mile and a half down the road and we find and recover it from the side of the road where it was languishing in its retirement, albeit a bit frayed. A quick compare and yep, what do you know, it is a bit longer. That’s got to be the answer.
13 miles round trip to the friendly Checker’s Auto Parts Store and Oscar lets us trade in our belt and four bucks for one that is the next size longer. (This is starting to turn into one of my plumbing jobs, which always require 2-3 trips to the store before it is finished.) We compare it to the old one and it looks like a great fit. This will do it and we head back to the garage. 30 minutes later, a couple of bruised knuckles and the new belt is still to short. What the @%*# is going on here? It should not be this difficult to change a stupid belt! Well obviously we need a longer one and all the books and people are wrong that say otherwise. Right?
13 miles round trip to the friendly Checker’s Auto Parts Store and Oscar lets us trade our belt for an even longer one. (I am beginning to wonder what they say about us after we leave.) Anyway this one will do it and if it doesn’t, well tomorrow is another day since the sun has long since gone down and the streak on the ground you see behind us is our butts dragging. Back at the garage and it doesn’t take but 5 minutes to see that the belt is now too long and there is no way of tightening it up. Time to rethink this thing. By this time I could really use a beer.
Day two…and after several attempts to find a belt with the length that is somewhere between the last two, we order two sizes that will be in at 8:00AM the next day. Now I can’t seem to get this thing out of my mind, what went wrong here? Why doesn’t the factory specified number for the belt work? Was this version of the Scion a canard? Maybe it is because it has air conditioning. It made for a long night of what ifs, as I played the events of the previous days through my head. Something just didn’t add up.
Day three…morning, the Internet can be a wonderful thing sometimes. With the discovery of a post on a Scion Xb Forum from a
young enthusiast about belt replacement and complete with pictures, along came The Epiphany. “The first belt wasn’t too short. We were trying to put the @%*# thing on wrong! Go figure…who would have thunk? I am elated with the solution and at the same time perplexed at the events of the last two days.
13 miles round trip to the friendly Checker’s Auto Parts Store and with chagrin handed the belt to Oscar who traded our “too long belt” for the “original one” we had purchased two days earlier. This will do it. Back at the garage and within minutes the belt is carefully woven through the pulleys the way it was designed to go, it slips on so easily, you would have thought we had coated that puppy with Astroglide. The Xb was back together, up and running in 20 minutes flat.
So what is my point of my little story you say, besides some self-deprecating attempt at humor? Well…why did we and mainly I, ignore what was the now painfully obvious? That we were possibly putting the belt on wrong, when the right one did not fit. Why didn’t I just look at the Scion Xb in my own garage and compare the way we were doing it? Somehow, someway, we were so convinced that there was only one-way to do this thing that we did not even consider another possibility. Since we both bought into it, we supported each other with our choice. Was this a form of Tunnel Vision? Was it kind of a group entitativity that then blocked out all other solutions? So in the process we continued to make assumptions based on this initial wrong perception and then veered farther and farther away from the correct solution with each successive one.
I’m now thinking this could be human nature and may happen more than we would want to realize. I was also surprised at how easily we both fell into the trap. So I ask…where else does this happen in our life? How many times have we made a quick assessment and so convinced that we are right that we then become inflexible to other options or opinions? Do we do it with friends or people we have just met? Maybe at work with a new project? Maybe even while driving? How about our congressmen and women or for that matter and what about our military? Now it is getting scary.
These last few days have proven to be a good lesson for me. I must realize and remember that it is important to keep an open mind and to remain flexible to new concepts at all times.
I sincerely hope this is not a sign of “Old Age”.
Love, Dad
You will find the instructions for Scion Xb belt routing here.