Ok, I don't start many post here, but I have had the same issue twice in as many weeks.

The Idler Pulley (who brainfart was this idea), with it's adjust at the top and tighten the pulley bolt to lock it in, keeps coming apart on my Maxima. First time I thought it was a fluke, so I rebuilt it with 'OE' parts and bought a new belt... and a week and a day passed and I am driving and I hear noises under my hood, and suddenly see my belt and pulley behind my car (I pulled over and retrieved the parts).

When I rebuilt it this time, I had to replace the nut and the spacer and the washers since I couldn't find them. I added a second nut to 'lock' down the first nut, and I hope this 'fixes' this issue.

However, if it doesn't I'm probably going to have an old friend of mine 'build a better pulley assembly, in order to permanently fix this issue.

Anyone else have this happen, and what other 'ideas' do you have to make it stay assembled.

 

Why rebuild? They're like 35$ brand new from Nissan...

Same thing happened to me, saw it in my mirror, didn't bother retrieving. Went ahead and bought a new unit for the aforementioned price, installed, been fine ever since.

 

yeah bro. I changed mine right before summer started from dealership. The only problem is that you have to reuse the mounting bracket. So you have to take the whole pulley into pieces and remember exactly what goes where when re-assembling but its not that difficult.

 

My pulley snapped off 4 years ago when I inserted the spacer behind the bolt adjuster.

Assembling it using this diagram solved the problem:

http://www.courtesyparts.com/maxima-...1822_1844.html