Another dreaded belt problem..

[tay97gst]

Ok so I'll try to get as specific as I can regarding my problem. I was having a squeal at startup pretty much every time my car sat for 4 hours or more. Sometimes it would start rough when the squeal was going to be especially loud. The squeal would go away if I put the car into gear and dropped the rpms lower than 1k rpms and then it would be fine(sometimes there would be some chirping afterwards until the car got to operating temp). I looked at the harmonic balancer and it looked ok. Thinking it could be a belt,because I have no idea when the belts were even changed,I replaced the power steering, alternator, and ac belt(was no ac belt previously). I went through every pulley removing any bits of belt or dirt and even took a wire brush to them. After I swapped out all the belts, I let the car sit overnight to see if it would squeal still, and to my utter dismay, it squealed. And on top of that now I have another problem. When I get to about 30mph one of the belts starts making a very unhappy noise, and gets more aggressive the faster I accelerate. When I put the car in neutral and rev it there is no noise, it's only when I'm driving. And I dont believe it happens if I'm in first and go into high rpm's, it's only when I get to about 30mph and over. I think I'm going to remove the ac belt because the ac didnt even work after I put the belt on and since i've never heard this noise before I put it on. Does this jump out as anything to anyone, I could really use the help here.
Thanks for reading my novel.

 

[WES_393]

Try tightening the belts a little more. Sometimes the belts will stretch and settle on the pulleys letting them loosen up a bit. Any clue how many miles on the alternator and water pump? I had a Mitsu alternator crap out and cause squealing issues which became progressively worse. If tightening them doesn't help, pull the belts off and make sure all pulleys (ac, alternator, water pump) spin without much resistance and have no up/down play.

 

[tay97gst]

I tightened the alternator and ps belt using a crowbar to get it as tight as i could. It was pretty hard to get the ac really tight so I'll try and tighten that some more. I'm more worried about the noise when I'm driving rather than the squeal now. It's just curious to me that it didn't happen before and now it's happening so I'm guessing it can only be a loose belt or the ac belt since that wasn't on there before.

 

[gieri002]

Just a thought but make sure the 2 pulleys on the waterpump were bolted on in the correct order.

 

[tay97gst]

Just a thought but make sure the 2 pulleys on the waterpump were bolted on in the correct order.

Well, when i bought the car it didnt squeal like this and the pulleys werent touched since ive owned it. I appreciate the thought though.

 

[blakmoondsm]

The ac compressor may be bad, and therefore causing the noise.
Remove the ac belt and your noise should be eliminated.

 

[isantop]

The ac compressor may be bad, and therefore causing the noise.
Remove the ac belt and your noise should be eliminated.

I would guess alternator. If the AC compressor belt were bad/loose, wouldn't the belt only squeal when the AC is on?

If it was the Power Steering, then it should squeal worse when the wheels are turned (the closer to the locks you get, the louder it would be).

Only the alternator belt is always spinning with full load.

 

[Ravenous]

My money would be on the A/C belt/clutch/pulley. After my second compressor clutch went I just deemed the A/C wasn't worth it here in the great Pacific Northwest. Both of mine made angry noises. Does the noise go away with the A/C on or off?

 

[PieEyedPiper]

Go back to your harmonic balancer.

 

[tay97gst]

Oh yeah i forgot to mention. No change when the ac is on or off but im still suspicious of a bad compressor

Go back to your harmonic balancer.

Are you referring to the squeal? I'll take a pic of it tomorrow and hopefully get some feedback on its condition but it looks ok to me

EDIT: Well I haven't had a chance to do anything yet, but I just took it for a drive and when I started it up it squealed like a madman and there was nothing I could do to get it to stop. It did it for about 45 seconds and when it finally stopped I smelt a distinct burning smell... greeeeaat. Im guessing that was one of my belts rubbing against something. I go out tomorrow and see what actually happened.

2nd EDIT: Well i got under the car to take off the ac belt and to my surprise, i noticed a whole in my splash guard that 's next to the tire. I had forgotten to secure both the splash guards together so when i drove the air pushed the splash guard into my tire causing the awful noise. Good news for me I guess haha