Help - light on

It is serious and not really safe to drive.

When that light is on, the battery usually is going dead. This will leave you stuck someplace and can even cause the car to die on the highway.

You could open the hood and have a look at the fan belts. If you have a broken or missing one it will cause that. If it is just a belt, any garage can usually change that cheaply for you or if you are halfway handy with a wrench it usually isn't a hard job to do yourself depending on the car.

A broken belt can also cause it to overheat which will damage the engine to some extent and can actually kill the engine period.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

Biss wrote:

You don't mention the make model and year of car...which might help.

If your alternator light is on solid, be very sure to take good walking shoes as your car isn't gonna go very far before it runs the battery down and the car halts. Pop the hood and see if something obvious like a broken belt is wrong... on MOST cars an easy fix unless it is one of those big long complicate serpentine types.

Never heard of an air filter light....

On the contrary, I find that serpentine belts are the easiest belts to change, because there's no inner/outer belt problems (i.e., having to remove an outer belt before you can replace an inner one).

Also, with serpentine belts tensioning is automatically taken care of with a spring-loaded idler wheel, rather than by having to pretension the belt with a crowbar while you tighten the alternator bolt with your other hand, etc. Usually all that is needed is a single wrench, sometimes only a breaker bar.

Admittedly, getting them routed correctly can sometimes be a minor hassle, but overall serpentine belts are a vast improvement over multiple v-belt setups.

Thats odd, the install instructions from the Factory Service manual claims I have to use the adjustment bolt that is part of the power steering pump brackets to install the belt. And looking under the hood, I see these pretty much as pictured in the FSM.

Self adjust mechanisms for serpentines aren't universal, bummer.

Mainly in that they tend to get your attention in a big hurry by making sure nothing works.

I guess you are right, but I must be lucky, because every vehicle with a serpentine belt that I've personally encountered uses a spring loaded tensioner, with the exception[1] of my '87 Tempo, which had a manual tensioner for a serpentine belt that drove the A/C, but not all the accessories, so it was a bit of the worst of both worlds. That was a pretty crap design.

Still, even with a manual adjustment, having only a single belt to maintain beats having multiple belts. And I'm pretty sure that serpentine belts are more durable than v-belts, too.

[1] IIRC

I think they are. My oem bmw serpintine belt and alternator lasted 5 years. The second lasted 1 year from improper installation even with a spring loaded tensioner. They're easy to change, but you have to take note of belt routing paths. On the other hand my Honda alternator-pump belt is more than

8-years old.

Dear OP: My Honda can go as low as 8V before the "check light" appears. And probably not a good idea. But never drive after sundown. Drive from home to a repair station in bright daylight is okay. Since the headlights (or brake lights) drain a battery in seconds or minutes. If you drive shut off the car near a 24 hrs battery dealer. Some batteries are sold fully charged and some don't. Tibur

Honda seems to use manual-adjusting serpentine belt setups like that on at least some models, for some reason. It really makes no sense whatsoever to me..