I recently noticed a small movement with my drive belt tensioner. A little backstory on my recent issues: I've replaced 3 radiators in the past year. the first probably due to old age, i suspect. The second one and most likely the third one were because I didn't bleed the system correctly or because I bought cheap radar detectors off Amazon. So anyways, recently the truck started to get a little hot due to the third radiator having a leak in the fin just on the other side of the plastic side the top hose is connected to. I still drove the truck until the truck was probably close to having no water in the radiator, and on that day, i think all the radiator water did leak out because the truck then began getting much hotter, probably to the point where you could say definitively it was overheated, and I drove it for idk, 5-10 minutes with the gauge at 65-75%, then the truck started to act weird, so I pulled over and turned the car off and opened the hood. then left for another 2-3 hours with the truck just parked to cool off.
I came back and decided to drive it a bit more after putting some water in the truck. I took it just across the street and then pulled over and added more water to it to get it back to my house. I changed the radiator and thermostat and antifreeze and distilled water, and then I started it to start bleeding the system. I did it for like 2-3 cycles for like 20-25 minutes with the engine running and the heater on and the bleeder screw removed. After I felt like the thermostat was opened, I turned the car off and refilled the system, which only took a little more water.
The next time I turned the car on, it felt like it was idleing rough. I let it run for about enough time to get it running at normal operating temperature, shut it down, and check the water level. I didn't lose any coolant. Then, when I took it around the block, it was kind of rough running, and I also felt some hesitation when pressing the gas pedal. I put it back in the garage, thinking maybe it's possible that overheating the engine could cause the valve seats to get stuck open or closed because I watched YouTube and that was stated in a few videos.
So it very well could be that my motor mounts have totally failed. For awhile, I've been thinking the motor has been sinking a little and also going closer to the firewall and to the passenger side. A visual inspection of the mounts shows very noticable breaks in the rubber but no metal-to-metal contact yet.
But then I noticed as the car was running that the drive belt tension and pulley had a weird motion to them. I took the belt off, and this attached video is of this possible solution.
There is a lot to unpack here, but I would appreciate your suggestions and ideas as to why my car could be running so rough. Just a few more mentionable things:
The lights on the dashboard are pulsing or surging.
-The drive belt tensioner has a forward and backward movement when applying pressure to make the belt loose enough to install it around all the pulleys.
No water was detected within the oil.
and the oil has just been changed since the radiator has been replaced after the rough idle.
- Also took the air intake off and sprayed the throttle body orifice with the T.B. cleaner.
as well as replacing the throttle body position sensor, neither of these two helped the idle issues.
Also, I checked one plug on each side of the engine; the plugs look normal and are gapped correctly; there are no oil signs on the threads or any abnormal burning or discoloration signs. looked normal.
- plugs and coils were replaced about 7 months ago. The air filter was replaced two months ago.
car has been smelling rich for about 2 months now but i let it go for awhile because the car hasn't been showing any other issues other than overheating but that's maybe stopped and I haven't tested it out enough to find out because I think the car is still not running right so I don't want to push it to force the problem to get any worse.
-Car just passed 203k miles, which I regret even thinking about.
Any help is greatly appreciated, and hopefully someone on here can provide me with more information that may help with my truck's problem.
2003 dodge dakota tensionier pully, normal to move such as the video shows. forward and back motion video link because it wouldn't upload on this forum no matter how I tried to shorten the video or make it less resolution.
