Here's a fun story.
Somehow, prior to my purchasing my 412 in Dec 2002, someone reversed the alternator pulley. THis causes the pulley to be out of line with the main pulley by about 2 mm. needless to say, somehow this went unoticed by the garage that did the hoses, belts, filters, and fluid when I bought the car.
so I drove for 5 months with it reversed, and the belt never gave a peep. Worked fine.
Then a week or two ago, at a time when I had 15-million other concerns in my life (family probs, refinance, too much work, etc.) the belt popped in Richmond while I was driving up to Baltimore. No big. It was daylight, my battery is new... so I turned everything off, and drove on. Stopped at pep boys, bought a belt, and charger knowing I wouldn't have :30 minutes untill late in the week to fix the belt.
I charged the battery each evening, and drove back and forth the 12 miles to the office each day. Thursday afternoon during lunch, i went out to the parking lot, snatched the cooling-air cowling off, swapped the belt, and it was at that point when I spied the pulley issue. with the pulley reversed, the belt scuffed on one edge, got hot, and eventually would hop off.
No tool to reverse the pulley, so I hoped for the best with the belt skewed. If I could make it back to NC, my mechanic could do the pulley. I put the cowling back in place, and went back in to work.
After work, I made it about 50 miles, to Woodbridge, VA when the belt popped off again. It was 6:30 p.m. raining, and heading toward twilight. I stopped at Pep Boys and bought 5 belts. I left the cowling off, and drove on into the night.
I made it south of Petersburg when the next-to-last of he 5 belts popped off. It was nearly 10:00p.m., it was pouring rain, I had another 160 miles to go. What to do?
Then it dawned on me. The scuffing was due to the friction of one edge of the belt against the alternator pulley (since it was off center). How could I reduce the friction, while keeping the belt snug enough to charge/power lights, wiper, fan, CD player, amp, etc.
Tire Shine. Yep. That cherry-scented, silicone-enriched spray stuff. I had a bottle in the trunk, and I soaked the belt, installed it, and with the motor idleing, i spent 5 minutes lightly spraying the belt and the pulleys so that EVERYTHING in front of the cooling fan was dripping Tire Shine.
Needless to say, I got home with no further problems; powerwashed the motor the next morning, took it ot the mechanic, and had the pulley reversed and a new Continenal belt installed.
Phew. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.