Chirping driving me insane

[devinlamothe]

OK so here's the deal. My car was squealing/chirping and I narrowed it down to the accessory belt. I had the dealership re-tighten and put a new belt on, problem solved. Fast forward to today.

Squealing/chirping is back. The belt is fine so this leads me to believe it's either one of the pulley's making the noise, or the bearings in the pulleys. Any ideas? This is driving me up the wall.

The squeaking noise is synced to the belt making revs around the pulleys and is in sync with the engine timing. When I accelerate it goes away.

Any suggestions?

[1NZYaris1]

possable water pump failure , or alternator .

[bronsin]

Take the belt off and rotate the WP, AC, etc and see if there is obvious binding in the rotation. Perhaps though the belt has loosened. If you retighten it it might fix the noise. Then again, it might mask a worn accessory. My sons ECHO (with 124k miles) chirped whenever you acccelerated but tightening the belt two or three times fixed it.

[jambo101]

Get a bar of soap and rub it over the belt,should eliminate the belt noise,if not you've got a bearing going somewhere.

[devinlamothe]

I'll try and retighten it if I ca. Figure out how lol but I should let you know I do have 130k km on the car, and ac belt was changed at around 100k km. The belt still looks new so I doubt that is the issue. My guess so far from what you guys have said is the bumpy roads here have caused the belt to become loosened.

Will post my results.

[devinlamothe]

OK so an update. I tried the soap bar method and also spraying some water on the belt, the noise went away.

I'm guessing its loose and needs to be re-tightened ... however, even after looking in the service manual I am a bit confused. It seems like we use a pry bar and then re-tighten, but it mentions some units on how tight it should be ... anyone know how to measure this?

[Revsson]

OK so an update. I tried the soap bar method and also spraying some water on the belt, the noise went away.

I'm guessing its loose and needs to be re-tightened ... however, even after looking in the service manual I am a bit confused. It seems like we use a pry bar and then re-tighten, but it mentions some units on how tight it should be ... anyone know how to measure this?

I'm not sure about tightening either, as I haven't had that issue yet.
My old Geo Metro required putting a lot of pressure on the pry bar for
a really tight fit. In some cases, the Metro owners also had different
results with different brands of belts. Perhaps that would be an issue, too.

[YarisSedan]

Wd 40 works too. To me belt dressing sometimes makes things a lot worse. I am a seasoned mechanic and always use the "twisty" method which is taking the center portion of the longest side of the belt and twisting it 90 degrees. If it wont go that far then its too tight. If you can turn it 180 than obviousely its too loose. Ours you would loosten the altenator bolt and just pry against the altenator and the block with a pry bar or even a long screwdriver while cinching down the bolt.

Also when installing a new belt they should be slightly overtightend to compensate for the slight stretching. Which would probally why it was temporarily fixed. Probally it was left slightly loose. And once the belt stretched then the sound came back. Once you readjust it you should have no more problems.

[jambo101]

Be careful when re tightening it because if you over do it you'll start hearing another squeak in about 5k miles only this time it will be your alternator bearing..