Saturday found us a break in the rain, so rather than go secure gopher-wood for the arc I figured I would do some preventative maintenance on the residential fleet.
We drive an '03 Chrysler Piddley Cruiser with a stick-shift. It's been a good car to date but a few months back picked up a chirping fan-belt tensioner pulley, so repairing this was on the docket.
It proved rather difficult to get the pulley off (no room to get the bolt out) and after trying 3 parts-stores I found out why.
The pulley isn't available by itself.
So in effect, I was supposed to spend $80 dollars on an entire tensioner assembly to alleviate a noise in a $2.00 bearing molded into a 39 cent plastic wheel.
I'm no fiscal guru, but this seemed a little overkill.
End result:
I found out with the proper dental tool you can pick the seal out on an idler-pulley bearing and repack it. I lucked out on this because the bearing was just dry, not yet damaged. So the net repair was only a dollop of moly-lithium grease.
Good thing guitars don't have idler pulleys.
The moly grease would sure get your pants messy.
