AC compressor pulley broke off $$$ damage
 

Just a warning. My 2007 GL450 w 80k miles suffered a broken AC compressor pulley. Pulley sheared off at the bearings. took out the idler pulley and tensioner. I found AC pulley and belt sitting on the bottom of the engine bay pan. The idler pulley was all screwed up. lucky it was on local street 1 mile away. My wife was driving and belt came off and caused loss of power steering. She used all her strength to get the car pulled over in a safe spot.

Result. $1400 in damaged at my independent service. Parts needed. New Denso AC compressor & new belt, idler pulley, belt tensioner. and labor was about $550 with new AC evac/recharge.

The warning sign was AC stopped working with very strange noise. My indy. said they have never seen this damage before. I was asking to test the feasibility of changing the AC pulley only but my indy say they have to take out the compressor anyways. The labor is the same but there could be damage to compressor internals. So I figure not worth the $500 in AC compressor saving the have this happen again in the near future.

Arg..

Something like this happened to me yesterday but, my culprit was the Idler Pulley. Coming home from work on the Gowanus Expressway I noticed that I didn't have any power steering, then the dreaded RED battery light soon came on. Popped the hood and saw that the belt was ripped to shreds. All pulleys were fine and initially couldn't pinpoint the culprit until I saw that the Idler Pulley had completely disintergrated. I did noticed that the belt, which was new, was squeaking the previous night but, I couldn't identify where it was coming from, now I know. The hardest part of the fix was, removing the remaining remnants of the belt from the pulley grooves. I consider myself blessed due to, all of my mishaps have happened close to home.