Long story short...on the way home from work, rain is pouring down, I go through a puddle, and it knocks my alternator belt off. My battery is about 3 months old, and I was able to get home with no problems. My question is, can I get back to work tomorrow (repair shop across the street) which is 15 miles/30 minutes away? A quick answer would be appreciated!

Depends. The battery, sans alternator, will have enough juice to power the ignition for a long time ... but things like lights on, radios, A/C, etc., drain that juice down quickly. If you turned everything off when the belt popped and just drove for 30 minutes, chances are the battery has enough life to get you back to work, if you again have no accessories on. The test will be in the morning if it has enough go to crank the engine ... that is a sizable drain. Another consideration is if you are in stop and go traffic with brake lights and turn signals, very iffy. If you have a battery charger trickle charge the battery overnight and that should get you there. If no charger, jump from another car with engine about 1200 rpm or so for about 15 minutes and that should give you enough charge. Not a good situation if you have to chance a freeway jam, not as much gamble if open road.

Is the alternator the only thing that the belt powers? If it also powers, say, the water pump, you would be in trouble. Did the belt break or just fall off? If it just fell off, I would wonder how since I have never heard of that happening. Something must have come loose or you broke a pulley somewhere.

It's happened before in the same situation..hitting a puddle of water. Last time, they said that the belt just came off, they put it back on, and drained the water out of the alternator. I doubt water got in my alternator this time, since it wasn't a big puddle, but the belt is definately off.

That just does not sound right. Again, what kind of car is it, and does the belt power anything else (i.e., is it a serpentine belt that wraps around multiple components)? Belts don't just fall off, puddle or not.

Water should not be knocking off belts on your car. Something else is wrong. It sounds like it's not on tight enough.

2481, what did you end up doing?

Took it to City Garage down the street, instead of to the place across from work. The tensioner on the belt is broken, therefore, making something like water knock the belt off. They are placing the tensioner (I don't know the technical name, I know the purpose), and replacing the belt.

[This message has been edited by tamu2481 (edited 9/16/2005 10:26a).]

"Tensioner" is what I call it. Good call not driving it far. If it has a tensioner pulley, then it must be a serpentine belt and must also run your water pump. You are lucky that you didn't overheat yesterday.

Yes, it is a serpentine belt. Also, they just called and said that they recommend replacing the timing belt at 90,000 miles. I am at 88,000 miles. I don't want to replace that right now, but I'm guessing you recommend replacing that as well?

I don't necessarily recommend that. What kind of car is it?

If it is a timing belt plan on changing it as soon as you can afford to, if it is a timing chain you can wait a little longer. Usually if a timing belt breaks you are asking for big $$$ troubles. Go to your local auto parts store and ask them if they sell a lot of timing belts for your make and model car.

I think you’ll be fine driving on your battery to a shop. I used to live in Corpus and drove my ’89 Land Cruiser to my parent’s house in the panhandle for Christmas one year. The alternator went out when I was almost home. That vintage of Land Cruiser is pretty rare so nobody had an alternator in stock, and it was going to take several days to get one out of California. I had to get back to Corpus so I put three extra batteries in the back and took off. I drove until the battery was about dead and then changed it out with one of my spare batteries. Anyway, I made it to Corpus which was about a 12 hour drive with four batteries so you should be fine with a 30 minute drive.