1988 Fiero coupe for long travels on my job. I was heading back from Davenport Iowa heading back east to Des Moines Iowa after my jobs, one in Bettendorf, and one in Davenport. I ran into this storm system, and it caused my serpentine belt to fly of. I recently installed a new Gates belt with air conditioning on at 2.5. I have the Rodney Dickman tensioner set up and didn’t see anything wrong with it. What my diagnosis is was that it was just so wet that it slipped off of the tensioner pulley through heavy downpours. I was stranded just north of West liberty on I 80 on an onramp after having to pull off of the highway, because it started to overheat and no voltage. While I was sitting there on the on ramp, I realized it would take at least 15 miles to get undercover to be able to fix it. Getting back onto I 80 hoping that that rain downpour would subside, and the lightning strikes would stop, I suddenly realized that I can get back onto I 80 if I went back onto the offramp and got under a bridge
It would be my best bet as it was lightning strikes and raining to where I couldn’t do anything except try to protect myself. It was a scary call, but I was finally able to get under the bridge and get the serpentine belt back on and continue my way, but not without further problems because somebody had flipped over in their SUV by driving too fast and it caused everything to stop on I 80 heading back west finally got out of that mess and traveled east to where I was able to stop off at Coralville Iowa and check everything. What a nightmare.
[This message has been edited by Erik (edited 07-11-2025).]
