Squealing pulley?

[98ramairguy]

I have a really loud squealing going on under the hood, I know its not a belt so im guessing its a pulley. Does any one have any idea which one it would be or a good Idea which one it is, I know theres only 2 with bearings so if someone could help me out it would be great. Its driving me NUTS:brick:

[sunsetorangess]

Well If you eliminated the belt now you have too narrow it down, Does it only do it wit the ac on, when you turn, so forth and so on. Start the car, pop the hood and listen too see where its comin from, the most common are the tensioner pulley and the ac pulley.
J

[NHRAMAN]

my tensioner does it some colder damp mornings until the engine bay gets all cozy.!!! I occasionally give it a spray of GREASELESS SILICONE. Works good, depending on how dirty your bay is.........:denied:

[F-Bomb]

i know this is going to sound weird but right when my water pump started leaking a little it sqeeled

[98ramairguy]

i sprayed some wd 40 on a lower pulley on the inside belt, it stopped for now maybe I need a new pulley?

[angel71rs]

I'll have you know I made 3 quick posts just so I could make the 5 post minimum required to post a link.:)

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showthread.php?t=461523

[seanlong]

I've had something squealing very loudly under the hood for 5 years now... dunno if it's the tensioner or an accessory but I've been waiting for it to break for a loooong time. Not sure what it is. Next time I run over my garden hose with a lawnmower, I'll cut off about 3 ft of hose, stick one end near each accessory and pulley, and listen in the other end. That should let me figure out which one it is.

Until then I figure if it's lasted 5 years after the dealer told me I'd be walking by the end of the week, I'm good to wait a bit longer.

[Danger731]

tensioner, mine has sounded like a freight train for 2 years now.

[seanlong]

How hard are those to replace? (tensioner)

[angel71rs]

Easy to pop them right off, I think 3 are 13mm hex bolts. One of the ones on the bottom is a Torx, so you need the proper socket and you must dig out any dirt in the Torx hole so socket gets a full bite or you will round it out.

[cruz3]

Idler/Tensioner pulleys are likely culprits. Same thing has happened on three of my vehicles. Last one I changed was on my dad's Taurus. Make sure you get the torque right. I didn't tighten it enough (scared about stripping the mounting threads) and had to get a new one. I can look it up in my Chilton's if you need it.

[Red Chevy]

I like how all of you are waiting for the bearings to seize in the squealing pulleys and pop the belt and tear shit up under your hoods. Thats some good ole Georgy Porgy Bush thinking right there. OK, if you have any kind squealing the best thing to do is take the belt off, while the motor is cool and of course not running, and you can spin the pulleys by hand. If a pulley is going bad, you will hear a low grinding noise, this means the bearings are wearing out. You might not hear it when it rains outside because moisture gets onto the brearings and quiets them. And belt dressing and spraying WD40 on it is only something to make you feel better. If your belt sqeaks its too lose. Everyone on here that has been waiting years to change it is EXTREMELY lucky and loves taking chances. FUCK THAT!! Thats like wipping your ass with a cactus and hopeing you dount get stuck. Let me ask you this, lets say you are the unlucky one, would you like to be going down the highway at about 80mph and have your belt snap and get wrapped between your crank pulley and block? YEAHHH EXITING, FUCKIN' MOUNTAIN DEW EXTREEMMEEEE!!! ARGG. So if you like, you can wait like these guys, or fix your problem. If you are ever riding around and wonder why you are always smelling rubber burning, and you are not spinning the tires, the pulley has ceased and the belt is just sliding across it.

[F-Bomb]

he said its like wipeing your ass with a cactus:moon: ha ha ha

[98ramairguy]

does anyone know the part number for the pulley with the torx screw in it? Thanks

[Red Chevy]

the screw might come with the pulley, give chevy dealership a call

[big e]

check out a similar post on this page (Bearing in pulley squealing ) Read reply # 5 for a bearing install.

[seanlong]

I asked the service guys to look for the squeaking pulley while he was working on the fuel pump replacement, and they couldn't hear anything wrong. That's why I've been running it like that for 5 years... Sometimes it is very loud, sometimes it doesn't squeak at all.

[Red Chevy]

That's cool. Just keep waiting and when it seizes and pops the belt, you'll definitely know which one it was. It will look like a melted ball of shit sitting on the screw. But it might not be a pulley at all, it may be something else. But understanding the stress a sports car is under compared to normal cars, you might want to put forth the effort and find what it is. BUT, if it's a Ford, don't worry about the squeaking, just be thrilled the bitch starts more than twice in a row, or starts at all without a raindance, a prayer and rubbing it's balls.

[seanlong]

You're kinda funny Red Chevy :)

It's not that you're wrong, but the way you express yourself makes me laugh instead of going "yea you're right".

I'm in Korea and my car is in TX, so there isn't much I can do at this point. The service guy said that nothing is squeaking so there isn't anything he can do to "fix" it. I'm not going to have him run the car every day waiting for the temperature or humidity to hit that magic balance where the pulley starts squeaking, so nothing will be done until it squeaks at a time when I can pop the hood, stick a section of garden hose in there, and figure out for sure what's making the noise. I'm certainly not going to randomly start replacing parts because they used to make noise sometimes... Yea I should have replaced it 5 years ago when it first started squeaking but since it's apparently not making any noise now, and nobody who can do anything about it has ever heard it make that noise, replacing pulleys at semi-random is just throwing away money and time/effort.

Hell, if I wanted to throw money at the car I'd start by replacing all the radiator hoses. The big ones collapse when the car cools down, and once they start doing that it's only a matter of time before they leak or burst. The dealer wants almost $900 for a new set of hoses, so it'll have to wait until I can do it myself. The same goes for the belt and all the fluids.

For that matter, the low-pressure return on the power steering rack has a leaky seal so the car requires a little more effort to turn the wheel than it should, and once every couple of months, right after engine start the steering will will "grab" for a sec at dead center when turning out of the garage or parking spot. But it's been doing that for almost 7 years now and I've autocrossed it for 3 seasons with no ill effects. Even experienced f-body autocrossers don't notice a thing with the steering, so I'm not going to do anything but monitor the quality of the PS fluid and refill/replace as necessary. My stock painted alloy wheels show signs of corrosion, and it's a toss-up if the corrosion is causing cracks that could make a wheel fall off. My rear pinion seal was leaking and was fixed under warranty, and there is a tiny bit of visible oil there so I suppose I could get that replaced again too. The rear diff squeaks badly when turning right at low speeds, but it tests out within factory specs and the diff oil has the right amount of additive in it. Should I toss that out too?

I could easily put $5000 in repair into the car if I replaced every little thing that doesn't always work 100% perfectly, even if I did all the work myself. As the blue book value of the car isn't much more than that, at some point I'd be better off finding a low-mileage '02 and replacing the whole car. Or just buy that new vette I've been looking at.

[Red Chevy]

Yep! The funny thing about cars is, they almost NEVER make the noise when the service technician has it. Makes you think they know whats up. And you definitely dont want to guess at whats wrong, that cost too much. And what do you call low mileage?

[seanlong]

Low mileage for an '02 would in my mind be under 60k. I drive about 15k per year.

Of course, it would totally depend on the car and my assessment of the previous owner(s). I'm not shopping for a replacment now but things like aftermarket mods or anything that says "racing" to me would probably kill the deal. I race and haven't killed my car, but I'm "that guy" who still has the original clutch at 120,000 miles even after autocrossing for 3 years. I am on my second set of brake pads, but I replaced the originals before they were anywhere near being done. I'm on original rotors and have only had them turned once. I drive hard but was taught to drive by a CHP pursuit driver (my dad) who learned early in his career how to baby a car while driving it harder and faster than the people he was chasing, and the result is that I've had far fewer major problems with my car than most other people.

The flip side of that coin is that I know how *other* people drive, and most people don't use all the car babying tricks I do so if they mod or race their cars, they're most likely killing it over time. That's not really a bad thing IMHO, but I don't want to buy a car and then spend time repairing/replacing things that were worn out by the previous owner. A low-mileage f-body driven by some guy or girl who would never dream of racing is the sort of thing I'd look for.

Then I'd swap out the fluids for stuff that I can race with, swap the brakes, have the clutch inspected, put in my race shocks and maybe a front swaybar, and go racing again :)

[Red Chevy]

I understand that, so many people dont understand driving nor racing. I don't race, but a man that used to race motorbikes explained to me a long time ago, wheelies and smoking tires don't win. My car has low mileage it's at 34,600. I bought it from this married couple in Kentucky, that ended up having too many kids and couldn't enjoy it. The car was unbelievable when I got it. It only had 30K mi. on it. It looked so good, I kept thinking they wrecked it and had someone rebuild it. But in the end it wasn't wrecked, just beautiful. The only thing I did to it was put in a K&N filter and trim the bottom out of the air box. The only plans I had for it was to add LT's, cold air induction, and maybe get a performance PCM from Nelson Performance. I only wanted the car to breathe better, get better gas mileage and "think" more efficiently. But now I'm considering selling it because there is a good chance I'll be going to Pharmacay School in the Fall of '07 and being able to make the payments will be uncertain. So, I figured if I had to sell it, now would be the time before all the mods, with low mileage, and while I could get a good price for it. But, I still haven't made up my mind yet. I'm thinking sell the SS, and get something I could pay off before Pharm School starts, that way if I can only work part time or not at all my car will be mine. But the thing that makes it hard is, I think logically while I'm sitting at my computer, when I'm behind that wheel, I get gas on the brain and tell myself, you're not selling this car. But the smart thing to do would be to sell it, graduate and then I could buy one of the new Camaro's coming out, or even a vette maybe, but probably a camaro.

[seanlong]

One of the best bits of advice my parents ever gave me was to avoid being "car poor"... Don't trade in your life for a car payment. I didn't buy my trans-am until I had a steady job and could make a big down payment, and then I paid off the loan more than a year early. Now, I'll never use a loan to buy a car... If I can't pay cash for it, I'll keep the one I have running until I can.

There will always be another nice car... yea it sucks giving up a car that you love especially since truly reliable cars are one in a thousand and it sucks even more giving up a car that doesn't have any major problems, but you gotta set some priorities and keep them. My parents proved to me that buying stuff on credit is a great way to stay poor and never get ahead, so I pay cash or do without. Funny thing, after a couple of years I noticed that I almost never have to "do without" anymore. I just had to suck it up and "live poor" until I got a paycheck or two ahead in the bank account, and everything got easier.

Normally I wouldn't recommend giving up a reliable used car because maintaining a used car is almost always cheaper than buying a new one, but if you're making payments and trying to get through school then maybe it's not the right time to have a really nice car. Go cheap until you can either pay cash or not worry at all about making the payments. I drove an $800 car for my first year of college, and did without a car for the next 2 years of college, drove a $1,000 beater for the last 2 years of college (yea it took me 5 yrs), and I got ahead a lot sooner than my friends who got a nice car and a hefty car loan too early.

[Red Chevy]

When I first bought the car I thought I'd be able to pay it off before I started pharm school, because I thought I'd have at least two years before I got in, well things are looking a lot better and I'll be able to get in a year earlier. Hell, I wouldnt have even bought a car if I hadn't lost my truck in Hurricane Katrina. I had a 92 1500, that was paid for and ran like the wind, but oh well. Of course I didnt have to buy an SS but kind of figured if I had to buy, might as well get something I want. I'll probably end up with an 02 - 05 Impala. Pay for it quickly and make it mine.

[seanlong]

Sounds like a good plan. Good luck with the school :) I hope you can get that dream car in the near future without killing your bank account.

[Red Chevy]

Thanks, have a good day.