Belt chirp…

[draper11]

Love this old thing. But this belt is maddening. In the past 12 months I have replaced water pump, alternator, belt, tensioner, and idler.

I wiped all pulleys clean, including filing down the tooling lines in the tensioner grooves.

Spraying soapy water or wd40 around idler pulley quiets it all down for a second.

Still can’t get rid of the chirp. Had a motor mount fail, not sure if that knocked my harmonic balancer out of alignment or what. My water pump pulley seems to have a wobble but not sure if that is due to undue tension somewhere else. I guess I will have to get the dealership to look at.

 

[Doubeleive]

Love this old thing. But this belt is maddening. In the past 12 months I have replaced water pump, alternator, belt, tensioner, and idler.

I wiped all pulleys clean, including filing down the tooling lines in the tensioner grooves.

Spraying soapy water or wd40 around idler pulley quiets it all down for a second.

Still can’t get rid of the chirp. Had a motor mount fail, not sure if that knocked my harmonic balancer out of alignment or what. My water pump pulley seems to have a wobble but not sure if that is due to undue tension somewhere else. I guess I will have to get the dealership to look at.

what year is it?
what about the ac belt? it either has a tensioner also or is stretch belt, if it is tensioner you can get the stretch belt and dump the tensioner which can be prone to making noise

 

[donjetman]

crankshaft pulley/balancers on these engines need replacing when they get old. They are 2 parts, inner and outer, held together by rubber that gets old.
pulley balancer < $100
seal <$10
bolt<$20
rent /borrow the removal & installation tools from the autoparts store

 

[B-train]

Does the water pump have a painted pulley, or clean metal finish where the belt rides? Seen tons of these in the generator world with noisy belts and I narrowed it down to paint on the pulley causing the belt to slip.

If that's the case, remove belt and emery cloth the pulley to bare metal where the belt rides and that will prevent slippage and noise.

If that's not the case, then I'd look at pulley alignment with a good straight edge to make sure it's not being pulled sideways on one pulley or another. Also, spin idler and tensioner pulleys by hand with the belt off and listen for noise.

 

[draper11]

crankshaft pulley/balancers on these engines need replacing when they get old. They are 2 parts, inner and outer, held together by rubber that gets old.
pulley balancer < $100
seal <$10
bolt<$20
rent /borrow the removal & installation tools from the autoparts store

10-4. I will look at that next… Funny thing- I did pull out on the tensioner with the engine running and the squeal goes away. Perhaps there is not enough tension. Also, adding bar soap to groove side quiets it down completely.

 

[draper11]

Does the water pump have a painted pulley, or clean metal finish where the belt rides? Seen tons of these in the generator world with noisy belts and I narrowed it down to paint on the pulley causing the belt to slip.

If that's the case, remove belt and emery cloth the pulley to bare metal where the belt rides and that will prevent slippage and noise.

If that's not the case, then I'd look at pulley alignment with a good straight edge to make sure it's not being pulled sideways on one pulley or another. Also, spin idler and tensioner pulleys by hand with the belt off and listen for noise.

The water pump edge is bare metal- but t

what year is it?
what about the ac belt? it either has a tensioner also or is stretch belt, if it is tensioner you can get the stretch belt and dump the tensioner which can be prone to making noise

it is a 2011. I also changed out the ac belt two months ago. No tensioner on AC on this model.

 

[draper11]

Does the water pump have a painted pulley, or clean metal finish where the belt rides? Seen tons of these in the generator world with noisy belts and I narrowed it down to paint on the pulley causing the belt to slip.

If that's the case, remove belt and emery cloth the pulley to bare metal where the belt rides and that will prevent slippage and noise.

If that's not the case, then I'd look at pulley alignment with a good straight edge to make sure it's not being pulled sideways on one pulley or another. Also, spin idler and tensioner pulleys by hand with the belt off and listen for noise.

Water pump pulley edge is bare metal. Definitely a lip where paint meets metal. I added tension to belt while running and squeal stops. Also rubbed soap on grooved side stops the noise.

 

[blondie70]

Why don't you pick up a complete tensioner ? spring, body, pulley ?? and bolt it on ?

 

[draper11]

I think I will try to get an ac Delco and see what happens

 

[j91z28d1]

if it stops when you apply more tension to the tensioner and haven't replaced it. it's worth a try, or they sell manual ones for the race cars running high rpm that like to throw belts on shifts. could put one of those on it.

 

[Geotrash]

I had this problem on my '02 Suburban. No matter what I did, new belts would start squeaking after a few miles. The problem was likely a slight pulley misalignment, but before trying to replace a bunch of crap and lining up the pulleys, I tried a Dayco belt with the M-shaped ribs and it quieted it down. Never had another problem for the next 30K that I owned the truck. Might be worth a try:

https://a.co/d/7QLtVC2

 

[Fless]

I cured mine with a new Gatorback belt and a new tensioner and idler pulley.

 

[Geotrash]

I cured mine with a new Gatorback belt and a new tensioner and idler pulley.

I looked for those for these rigs and haven't been able to find them anywhere. Do you have a source? I'd like to bookmark it for myself!

 

[draper11]

M

I looked for those for these rigs and haven't been able to find them anywhere. Do you have a source? I'd like to bookmark it for myself!

i looked for gator back as well- I believe you can only find expensive old stock on eBay…??

 

[Fless]

I looked for those for these rigs and haven't been able to find them anywhere. Do you have a source? I'd like to bookmark it for myself!

Well, shoot. Continental bought them and sold them as Continental Elite, but apparently no longer make or sell them.

 

[draper11]

So I replaced tensioner- sound changed but was still there.

Had someone else look at it. He scrubbed the pulleys with a wire brush- specifically the drive shaft pulley which had an accumulation- and changed belt (other was three months old). Sounds perfect now. Hopefully this will last a while.