Are O'Reilly Masterpro V belts any good?

Fixnstuff said:

Lastly, I bought some of those 'close-out' low priced belts from Rock Auto Parts for temporary spare belts because I couldn't afford to buy expensive spare belts at the time. I want to mention that some of these 'close out' belts could be quite old, or they could be fairly new. If they are quite old, they probably won't last as long as a newer belt would, simply due to ageing of the rubber. That's why I am considering them as temporary low cost replacements.

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The recommended replacement interval for V belts is 3-4 years. My PS belt is probably 25-34 years old. Yes it could snap any time, I just didn't have another to put on when the ALT belt went. If it holds up another 55 miles I'll be happy. That's as far as I need to go to pick up the batch of belts I orders and had sent to a post office in a town where I'll be for a few days next week. Then I'll spend the couple hours needed to pull all the belts again and put in the all new "closeout" belts: Fleetrunner for ALT, XLs for PS & AC, and the OReilly one I bought back in Feb for VP.

The 3-4 years is under extreme heat and pressures from being under tension and being run. I doubt belts sitting in on a warehouse shelf are going to degrade enough that they can't be used for 3-4 years. It's not like tires mounted on a car that sit out in the hot sun with thousands of pounds of weight on them.

I have a lot more time and a lot less money to spend on this stuff. $1.50-$2.50 Gates XL belt on closeout vs $15 from WM/Amz is a big difference. My miles per year are pretty low, especially this year when I have been recovering from buying the motorhome money wise. (Buying tires and other vital parts).

By the time January 25 comes around (a year from the date I bought it) I will have put about 4,000 miles (give or take) so this first year has been ultra low. Next year, I intend to drive a lot more since my finances will be in far better shape after April or so and I can afford more miles.

I`ve been using v-belts from napa, and also ran alt to water pump only.

Picked up the Fleetrunner belt several days ago and it's a legit Gates belt, the top outer surface is green.

I picked up the other batch of belts today, and they are a mixed bag of brands. But looking back at the order, RockAuto does indicate "Private Label Pkg" which means in-house rebranding. Four are Carquest and one is DriveWorks, which was AdvanceAuto before they bought Carquest. Carquest/Dayco top cog belts are their in-house brand now it seems.



The two on the left (blue) are for ALT or PS. Sold by RockAuto as being Gates XL, but they are "Bravo Carquest" branded. Presumably it's Gates made but rebranded. They look and feel like good quality belts. Both 100% identical, made in Mexico. Manufacture date codes seem to indicate they were made in 2006 and 2007.


The center two (red) are for AC. Sold by RockAuto as Gates XL, but they are branded as CarQuest. They are two completely differently designed belts, but both have the same number 17630 printed on them. The smaller tooth one on left (in pic below) looks and feels like it's better quality, like the two "Bravo" ALT/PS belts, possibly manufactured 15th week of 2009 (date code=1509 ?). The larger tooth one feels and looks cheaper made, possible manufactured date of Sept 4, 2012 (date code=04092012 ?). Both made in Mexico. I wonder if the large tooth one is actually something inferior to Gates XL but got stuck in the CarQuest sleeve.




The one far right (of the first pic) is for the VP. Sold as a Dayco 15330DR, branded as DriveWorks 33013. Made in USA oddly enough. Quality looks and feels look. No date code that I can decipher.

Depending on how cold it ends up feeling later this week, I might just wait until another 30 miles until the next town where it'll be 62-66 degrees on Saturday-Sunday.

What I find interesting when I looked up belts on Advance Auto, Gates Fleetrunner & XL belts are listed as only having a 30 day warranty, even when you buy them at full retail price. Their Dayco Top Cog ones are all 3 year. Oreilly lists the Fleetrunner/XL belts as 1 year warranty.

All the ones I got are 30 day so it doesn't matter, but it's something to watch out for if you think about buying retail belts from Advance/Carquest, they rip you off on the warranty for Gates belts. Yeah these belts are old in age (as old as 2006) but they are far better than the ancient Motorcraft belts it has now.

Food for thought: Just because Gates makes a belt which is subsequently rebranded doesn't mean that it's as good as a Gates branded belt. If I tell Gates that I'll buy 50000 belts, if they make them to my specs, they'll make them as long as they're rebranded, and don't have the Gates name on them. After all, Ford makes the Lincoln, supposedly a very good car, but they also made the Pinto, which came complete with exploding gas tank.

gandalf said:

Food for thought: Just because Gates makes a belt which is subsequently rebranded doesn't mean that it's as good as a Gates branded belt. If I tell Gates that I'll buy 50000 belts, if they make them to my specs, they'll make them as long as they're rebranded, and don't have the Gates name on them. After all, Ford makes the Lincoln, supposedly a very good car, but they also made the Pinto, which came complete with exploding gas tank.

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Well, I got 5 belts for the price of one Gates XL at full retail price, so I'm happy with my purchase. All the CarQuest belts (except the odd large tooth one) look nearly identical in terms of quality to the Gates Fleetrunner, which has the same small sized teeth.

And I only lost that ALT belt because it was badly loose from me probably not tensioning it right, which I found out from a photo I took of the passenger side battery a few days before the belt was lost, where you could SEE how badly the belt was on the ALT pulley. So it was user error, not a problem with a bad belt. I just didn't keep up with inspecting belts like I should. It takes all of 30 seconds to visually inspect and feel the tension. Now I check them once or twice a week, and I have LOTS of spares. It's one belt thrown in almost 3 years of IDI ownership, so that's not too bad.

I'm not saying that those belts won't work, that they're not good. I'm just saying that I think the Fleetrunner is a better belt.

Too often what we buy is determined by what we can afford at that specific time. I've done it, bought a lesser quality part, knowing that a better quality part was available. I'm sure we all have. It's a choice dictated by the conditions at the time, and our projected usage.

gandalf said:

I'm not saying that those belts won't work, that they're not good. I'm just saying that I think the Fleetrunner is a better belt.

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I agree. That's why I got one for the alternator (and by extension, the vac pump). It's the furthest belt back and the most important so it gets the best quality belt. The rest are spares and to replace the rotten, probably 30 year old PS belt. The AC belt is probably a bit newer but it's Motorcraft too, so it's getting swapped for the better looking Carquest belt.

When it's all done, I will have 2 spare ALT/PS belts, 3 spare AC belts, and 2 spare VP belts. Some new, some used.

Cubey said:

The new VP bulb I got from an O'Reilly way back in February or so looks like the cardboard sleeve was made in the 90s. Ever even heard of "Armor Mark"? I think that's what they had in stock for MasterPro. I questioned it before I paid but they said that's what they had and the package shows it fits Gates 7330. It fits fine, better than the wrong too narrow Napa XL belt it had when I got it.

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Yes its a Master Pro product before it was master pro

I got the NOS belts put on today since it was just warm enough and not too windy. Tomorrow I will start the engine and idle it for 5 minutes, then tension each belt again like the instructions say. I wasn't going anywhere today, so I didn't bother starting it up just for that.

Here are the old belts I removed in case anyone is curious to see them. They are all heavily glazed and have varying degrees of cracking. Makes sense why the coolant temp was higher after I lost the fairly new ALT belt, the other 2 were slipping a lot. I will still keep them for absolute emergency purposes but yeah, they are well beyond their service life.


AC belt (Motorcraft):





Power Steering (Motorcraft):





Spare belt I put on for the alternator (Gates Green Stripe 9580):

Since you have all the new extra replacements, I would toss those in the trash and forget them. You have your known good replacements. Those are worn out. The cog belts will serve you much better.

riphip said:

Since you have all the new extra replacements, I would toss those in the trash and forget them. You have your known good replacements. Those are worn out. The cog belts will serve you much better.

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I only have one new spare for ALT/PS, so I need to keep at least one of the old ones, preferable the Gates ones since it's the least glazed. Otherwise I won't have a complete set of spare belts, I'd be lacking one for the PS or ALT, in the unlikely event that somehow all belts go.

Looking back through them, the only one I will throw away (for now) is the old AC belt I removed yesterday. I have another old Motorcraft spare but it's not nearly as glazed. For some reason it has a different part # but I guess they changed it at some point. It seems to be the same exact belt. The highly glazed is JC-634-LA and the better one is E4HE-8620-H1A. Odd that the JC one sounds like an older # belt but that's the one it had on instead of the newer sounding one. Maybe they got the 8620 from a junk yard vehicle as a spare? Who knows.

They don't take up much room shoved in a lower cabinet out of my way, so I'm gonna keep as many as possible. I can always throw them way later, but I can't get them back once they're gone, so for now I'll keep all but that worst AC belt.

I understand. Keep a lookout on rockauto.com. They have closeouts all the time + there is a code to use to save 5% on total purchase (check Supporting Vendors block). Get the cogged belts, they grab better & seem to last longer for me.

riphip said:

I understand. Keep a lookout on rockauto.com. They have closeouts all the time + there is a code to use to save 5% on total purchase (check Supporting Vendors block). Get the cogged belts, they grab better & seem to last longer for me.

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That's how I got these new belts but I couldn't find a working 5% code but eh that wasn't much of a savings on such cheap belts anyway.

I dunno about cogged lasting longer, since 2 of these old non-cogged belts may very well be 34 years old and were still working well enough to get me down the road. I would think that cogged have a greater chance of cracking and breaking since there is less material between the cogs.

After idling for 5 minutes, I shut it down and the belts all felt really tight still, so I didn't see much point in retensioning. After about a 30 minute highway drive, I inspected them again and they all still feel tight. The Fleetrunner on ALT is very firm feeling tension wise.

Quick update, if it really matters.

My power steering started squealing when turned to the end one way or another. The belt stretched some finally and had a lot of slop. Ac belt was sloppy too. Alt belt wasn't too sloppy but was looser than it was. So i took the time to retension them all.

I really hate tensioning the ac belt, its the worst one. It seems to require loosening 3 bolts and trying to tension it in a van chasis is tough. I'm really debating just pulling that belt off and doing without it. The fan/wp still has 2 to run it without the ac belt.