DWake

iTrader: (1)

Hi all, this happens to be my first post and it is unfortunately filled with stress. I bought my first T/A last month, a 99 A4 with 126xxx miles. Last week I changed out the main serpentine belt because the car would squeal for about 5-10 minutes every so often and the old belt was worn so I assumed that was the problem. The squeal is back and now worse. It doesn't go away like it used to and the squeal gets louder as my RPMs go up. After searching for hours and pretty much finding bad pulley threads I took my new belt off and played with the pulleys and none of them squealed AND I started the car with the belt off to make sure it wasn't the AC belt/pulleys. I turned my attention to the belt itself and shot some WD40 on it, using the idler pulley to coat it while the car was running to lube it all around. The squeal is gone but can just a belt really make that bad of a sound? It is a Duralast 790K6 that I bought from autozone for about 20 bucks. I'll keep playing with the pulleys/belt for a few more days but is there a better recommended belt for our LS1s?

Took some videos to maybe help diagnose this issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOm-BNPdjRE
- the horrible noise that is occurring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-F4VHfaLYk
- the noise goes away from shooting the belt with WD40 for just a second, and I used a thorough coat of the stuff on both sides after the video.

sjsingle1

iTrader: (1)

99% of the time its the PULLEYS..............not the belt......ask me how i know

DWake

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, I'm really hoping its not a pulley but if I put just a little WD40 on the belt while the car is running the noise goes away. I just can't believe that the belt is causing that much noise.

DWake

iTrader: (1)

Digging around under the hood again while it was squealing I did finally track down where the noise was coming from and found the culprit. It was the tensioner pulley.

ULTIMATEORANGESS

iTrader: (4)

i figured it was your tensioner.

DWake

iTrader: (1)

Noise came back this morning, but this time it goes away after about 5-10 minutes of driving. Squeaky water pump?

sjsingle1

iTrader: (1)

you have more than 1 pulley in the front

Empatho

iTrader: (16)

My car was doing the same thing, I replaced the tensioner pulley, idler pulley and new belt and it would still do it...Finally I decided to get a gatorback belt and it fixed my problem.

cherryelky305

iTrader: (2)

+1 for gator backs. belts are something you shouldnt cheap out on. not just with gm cars either. I work at a honda dealer and we get cars in all the time with aftermarket belts making noise (midas timing belt services, they use the cheap stuff)

DWake

iTrader: (1)

The only reason I threw out water pump is because I was talking to one of the guys at my advanced auto and he has owned 3 ls1 trans ams and they all had a squeaky water pump for 5-10 mins every time he started his car. I'm gonna change the idler pulley tomorrow and see if that fixes it.

zachrywd_01TA

Some would argue that WD40 is a bad bad thing to spray on anything rubber because it contains petroleum. I only use Silicone based lubricants when I'm spraying around rubber to be safe.

If you want to be a little more precise on where that squeal is coming from you might want to invest 10 bucks into an automotive stethoscope from your local auto parts store. I bought one to find a squeal on my motor and found it to be the lower idle pulley on the AC belt.

angel71rs

You could try this, cost is zero if you already have grease, just takes a little time to do all 4 as long as you're in there:

https://ls1tech.com/forums/general-m...r-pulleys.html

DWake

iTrader: (1)

I will definately do that next time. So now the squeaks are down to either crappy belts or my compressor idler pulley. Does anyone have any tips on getting a worn super tight T50 bolt off? I had to stop because I didn't want to strip it out completely and after putting all my weight into it several times from above the car and several more tries from underneath I just can't get it.

sjsingle1

iTrader: (1)

i used a 24 inch breaker on the 50Torx on the a/c pulley......worked like a charm

71ANTICARB

iTrader: (23)

I would definitely take a close look at the ac tensioner when I worked at the dealer we replaced a ton of these. I would also look at the compressor try turning the ac on and off while the noise is happening and see if it make a difference. +1 for the gatorbacks cause I also worked at the parts store and we got a lot of complaints about our store brand belts squealing even the better one like the duralast but never had a complaint bout the gatorbacks other than the price.