Hi,

Today I drove 150 miles to pick up my one year old ex demonstator Forester e Boxer with 2500 miles on the odo. Fell in love with it striaght away, however five miles into the journey home I put my foot down to pull out from a junction and it stalled. Started up again and noticed a rattly type noise from the engine, carried on driving, all manner of strange things began to happen, eventually after a few miles, battery charge warning light and finally a overheat warning came on so that was it, thought I'd better stop before cooking the engine. Rang dealer, arranged to come and collect me and put the Forester on the back of a trailer to take back to the dealership. A look under the bonnet revealed a seriously mangled auxillary belt, completely split in two halves long ways and  snappped the other way, a lot of the belt was wrapped around the alternator pully. Dealer was bewildered and said he had never seen anyhing like it and the car had been trouble free up to this moment. Was wondering if anyone else had seen similar issues with the belt, guess there must be an underlying reason for what happened? The alternator looks very fancy with a strange bracket/pully setup on the front I'm guessing that it is also a starter motor? Anyhow I'm back home now with no Forester waiting for a call from the dealer and feeling gutted. Anyone else aware of this sort if issue?

Wotcha and welcome - Shame your new motor let you down so quickly. Never seen anything like that myself

It was fixed in a couple of days with a new belt, tensioner and alternator. Since then I've done 2000 trouble free miles and I'm dead chuffed with the car!