Hey everyone,

I seem to have a problem with the AC belt squeaking. If I spray water on the AC belt, most of the chirp goes away, then spraying water on the belt with alternator and PS quiets down a barely audible chirp. I noticed the belts were a little loose, so I tightened the tensioners up to spec, but the chirp is still there. No slippage as far as I can tell, because I can turn on the AC compressor and rev it and it blows cold with no extra noise.

Then I looked closely at the belt with the engine running, and the belt seems to be travelling perfectly straight on all pulleys, except the AC pulley where it wobbles maybe half a mm or so, which seems to be the culprit. I checked all the AC compressor bolts, they're very tight, so it's not like the compressor is tilted.

I did buy a new set of belts because it was so cheap, but the belts are actually very new looking, zero cracks, the texture on the ribs feels just like my brand new belts (I know that's not very scientific, but still). I could just throw new belts on there, but I doubt it will fix the issue. I can sort of live with the chirping but it would be nice if it would go away.

Any idea how I could fix this pulley issue? Thanks!

 

Almost guarantee it's the tensioner pulley, remove the bolt and spin it by hand. Should have a pretty significant amount of resistance (barely make one complete revolution when you spin it by hand) and should have ZERO NOISE.

I'm betting it spins freely for 30-50 revolutions and has significant noise. The tensioner pulley should be replaced every time you replace the belts, they are a wearable item normally only good for 60k-80k miles.

 

You can go down to any parts house and ask for a tensioner pulley so you can spin it by hand to see what they should feel like.

 

Er, am I missing something? It's dead silent if I keep spraying water at the belt, so how can the noise be from the tensioner pulley?

 

Because lubricant (in this case water) is getting into the part that's squeaking. Take it off and spin by hand to find the squeak.

I can practically guarantee you'll find the problem once the belts are off and you spin everything by hand.

 

Okay I probably should've known this was the problem, but I was using wishful thinking and hoping it wasn't. The tensioner is totally fine, but the AC idler pulley itself has just the slightest bit of play (I can't actually see it move, but I can feel it barely wiggle), so it may be on its way out. That should've been the first thing I thought of, because the AC compressor is probably original while this motor is newer, and the belt seemed to wobble a little. I wiped the pulley clean and for now the squeak is gone, but I suppose this will need replacement at some point :/