Lew Hodgett wrote:
"Red" wrote:

I was looking at a 3 cylinder yanmar a few weeks ago and found the
alternator belt was slowly being eaten. Since then I inspected 3

more

similar fairly new (all from new to less than 3 years old) racing
sailboats with the same engine and all were slowly eating belts.

Belt

tension was within normal limits on each. All of these engines had 110

amp alternators on a single belt pully.


Seems quite normal to me.

If you look at the Amp v RPM for that alternator, probably needs a
dual belt drive.

Lew

Yeah Lew, that was my point in replying to the OP. There was obvious
accelerated wear on each belt on each identical installation from the
factory. So I am in agreement about using more belts on high amp
alternators. I've been noting though that some people/technicians/boat
mechanics think that a 110 amp alternator is not high amp, but the
consistant belt wear proves them wrong. Of course, there is a possible
alternate explanation for this particular type boat - Balmar has
supplied some OEM's, in this case Yanmar on some of their engines, with
mismatched belts/pullies. SAE belts will be eaten up if run on pullies
designed to be shipped to Europe. As I understand it, the pullies
supplied have a different angle than the angle the supplied belt is cut.