squeaking serpentine belt

[GTOger]

The serpentine belt was replaced about 200 miles ago and now it has begun squeaking / squealing / chirping. There are certain times when it goes away, but otherwise I have to drown it out with the throttle or the stereo. Neither is a big help stopped at a light and the guy next to me is looking over for all the wrong reasons. Ideas on how I might quiet the sucker down?

[gbmidyear66]

I've had the same issue.

I tried "belt ease" without much success. Had more success with silicon spray.

[tomtom72]

Just a fwiw, I ran into this squeak thing and I tried the usual 'fixes'....eventually I coughed up the cash for a GM belt vs whatever the parts store had...the squeak went away.

I observed that the parts store belt felt like the rubber was hard vs the GM boxed belt in my case. This I thought very strange, old stock sitting around a long time? :icon_scra I just don't know what to say, but you could feel the difference between the two belts!

:cheers:
Tom

[ZR1Vette]

Sure it is not the belt tensioner?? Bearings go out on those things and they start to squeak and squeal etc. Starts as intermittent then progresses to full time

[bldavis11]

When I replaced mine two years ago I had the choice between the part store's brand or Goodyear. After holding the two, the Goodyear 'Gatorback' was clearly superior. I never had a sqweak!

[pantera1683]

I was looking at one at one parts store that might have been sitting around the warehouse since Big Willy was Prez. It was dry rotted pretty badly so of course I let the parts guy know and didn't buy it.

[Paul Workman]

Mine is new and it squeaks; cheap crap from China. So, I'll look around for a Gates or Goodyear or ?

Far as a bearing squeaking goes, a trick we used often was to take a spray bottle with water in it and squirt the belt with the engine running. If it stops squeaking, it is the belt. Otherwise, it may be a bearing and for that a mechanic's stethoscope is handy.

Sometimes noise from a bearing travels thru the block to make it difficult to tell exactly where a squeak is coming from - in spite of using the probe on the stethoscope. A trick Marc Haibeck also uses is to remove the probe and just use the rubber hose as a makeshift directional pickup to poke around the front of the engine. That sometimes works when results with the metal probe is ambiguous.

Hope this helps.

P.

[GTOger]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. After a little further examination, I think it's not the belt but the tensioner. I have a replacement tensioner that the previous owner gave to me so it looks like that's going on the TO DO list. I'm thinking that there's probably a reason he picked up a replacement. ;)