it depends on the weather conditions and how hard you drive your car that the belt can start cracking and so forth.

 

I'm at 48,000 and I am replacing my belts this weekend. They are cracking and squealing. I am in CT, so the weather varies quite a bit.

 

The squealing can be solved by tightening the idler pulley a little. Whatever you do, don't use belt dressing.

 

Yeah, I hear ya. My belt tensioner is also squeaking, so I figured while I am down there replacing that, I might as well do the belts for another $20 too.

 

Why not? Just because it can wear them out faster?
I use it on four of my belts.

 

The FSM does not recommend belt dressing and some of my FSMs for my Maxima, Z28, and Subaru Legacy recommend it either. Belt dressing can do two things to a serpentine belt:

1) Cause premature damage to the belt, primarily the ribs

2) Can cause the belt to slip off under high load because the tensioner pulley is smooth and not ribbed.

 

Belt dressing makes any noise actually louder, plus, you really have to clean your pulleys with brake cleaner or something to get rid of the residue before you install a new belt, or ir will be noisy too, from my experience!

 

Interesting. Good to know, thanks.
I put the dressing on because my Stillen SC belt was slipping at high rpm and it was just about as tight as it would go.

 

Im at 43K miles and I noticed some cracking, from reading the post above I shouldn't be worried since these cracks are on the ribbed side. However I've been trying to find Gates parts number for replacing our belts, and here is what i found so far.

Gates #

Alternator, Fan, power steering belt: OEM: 6PK-1175 Gates: K040372
Air Cond. OEM: 4PK-0945 Gates: K060465

Anyone who can confirm or repost the correct part numbers, OEM & Gates please do so.

Anybody know where you can buy Gates belts online? I've tried a few websites that do sale Gates belt but apparently do not have these parts numbers.

 

Those numbers sound right.

If you hav a NAPA auto parts near you their belts are made by Gates.

If I remember right,the gates website has a store locator.

 

is there a DIY on this?

 

I wouldn't replace the belt because it is noisy. The noise just means that it's loose. Tighten her up and go for another 40k. The indication of wear is the cracking not the noise.