Okay, as many know, I have the worst behaved belts of anyone on this board, and i might be a step closer to figuring out why.

I recently replaced my PS and AC belts. The old AC belt was SUPER cracked and carbonized, and the old PS belt looked pretty much okay. So after torquing them both down, I had no problems, except it looked like the AC belt was smoking a little on startup, and it would definately smell kinda funky in the cabin for a couple seconds on cold starts.

This afternoon, I started my car and heard a little squealing. No problem, I thought, it's probably the PS belt needing to be tightened a little after it's stretched (which is the case because on cold starts it'll squeal a little bit if i twist the wheel too soon). A little more squealing and then it stopped. Okay, good. I'll just back out of my spot. HUGE CLOUD of blue smoke comes from the front end of the car. DAMNIT. Shut it off, pop the hood, pull the belt shroud off.. the AC belt is just hanging. Broken. I wait for it to cool off and pull it out. It's all cracked and carbonized just like the last one. I touch the AC pully.. fine. Touch the idler pully.. fine. Touch the AC side of the crank pully.. OW. The PS side of the crank pully was nice and cool though.

Obviously I've located the source of the problem. Now I guess I could just say "oh, that pully needs to be replaced." but could it be the BEARING that's supporting the pully which needs replacing?

One cool thing, without the AC compressor tying up power, the car revs quicker and gets MUCH better gas mileage. I've been getting like 220 miles before the empty mark and in the summer I usually can hit 300. I think that the crank pully problem has been affecting fuel economy.

So is it just the pulley (have i been typing 'pully' the whole time?) that needs to be replaced, or could it be something a little more "internal?"

Thanks in advance for any replies.. and I think I'm just gonna leave the AC belt off for the rest of the winter..

-adam