Chrysler Repair: 3.0L V-6 Serpentine belt slips off/overheats, chrysler lebaron, tensioner pulley

Question
I have a 92 Chrysler lebaron. the serpentine belt keeps pulling off the pulleys leaving a horrible rubber smell. All the pulleys seem to be in order. what else could cause this problem

Answer
Hi Megan,
I assume that you have the 3.0L V-6 engine. The two things that are possible, aside from one of the devices that is driven by the belt having a bad bearing which would cause the belt to slip on that specific device but would also make a sound so you would know that, first:
That one of the devices driven by the belt is mounted in such a way that its pulley is not in the same plane as the other pulleys so the belt is going around it at an angle (that you could check with a straight edge placed on the surface of each of the pulleys and comparing the alignment of the adjacent device pulleys with position of the straight edge...or trying to sight between the pulleys in a similar manner to ID any device that is out of the plane...the fix would be to adjust the suspect device in its mounting); second,
that the belt tensioner itself is worn/out of alignment with plane of the other pulleys. I have heard from others in the LeBaron group with that engine that the tensioner arm/pivot or the tensioner pulley is the cause of problems with the serpentine belt. So focus on the tensioner pulley and observe how it is positioned. The solution there is probably to simply buy a new tensioner/arm combo or perhaps to bend it.
That is my experience with that problem and I hope this is helpful to you. You could also write to the Yahoo group called The Chrysler LeBaron Club (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thechyslerlebaronclub/) and ask the owners of that engine for more specifics. I have the 4 cyl engine so can't give you first hand knowledge.
Roland