So when I bought the car back in August, it didn't have any sort of squeaks or squeals coming from the front accessories.

I added a Powerbastards alternator as my first mod because the stock alternator seemed ill (turns out the exciter had been hacked up and lengthened and was shortening out). The Powerbastards unit comes with an overdrive pulley and they recommend a 1" shorter belt. So, I went and got a 78" long Gates belt.

A few weeks later it started to squeak. The belt was tight, but not so tight the tensioner wasn't moving back some. See attached picture:

At this point I thought the tensioner had gone bad (144k miles) and replaced it. I still have the same squeak! It's awful at idle and under 2k. As RPMs climb it seems to go away.

My next thought it to replace the Powerbastards alternator pulley with the stock one and go back to the 79" belt. See if that cures if. If not, it's down to the water pump, power steering pump, or idler pulley. How can I isolate the sound, which might be better than replacing the nice new Powerbastards pulley:
Any suggestions?

 

Carefully pry the seals off of your idler and tensioner pulley bearings and grease them, I've seen many of them that are dry.

 

What's a recommended grease?

And thanks

 

What year is your car?

I know mine had the technical service bulletin for the idler pulley.

 

i chased a squeak for a LONG time.....replacing ALL the pulleys and using a goodyear gatorback belt was my fix.....you might want to compare the alignment of the pulley on the alt.....is it the same height as the stocker? my super alt had a pulley that was 3mm taller than the stocker

 

The only noises I've ever had were from the a/c belt tensioner. It wears out at the pivot point and causes the belt to slide across the pulley at an angle. You can test this by putting dielectric grease on the outside of the belt, the noise will go away for a few hundred miles if thats the problem.

Or you could just run for a while without the belt.

 

It's an 02. Hmm alternator alignment or a/c. I can check those. The weird thing is I just took it out and no noise at all. What the?

 

the TSB was a mid yr change in 2000.....it was a redesigned alt bracket and new pulley.......if you have a mid 2000-02 f bod and replace the pulley you MUST get the correct pulley as the previous P/N does not fit

 

Maybe that's the problem. ugh.

 

On my 99 that was my problem. I fixed it and BAM no more squeaking!!!

 

Well if the squeaking goes away once in a while, what does that mean?

 

Thats what mine did, sometimes it would squeak, sometimes it wouldn't.
It was mainly in colder conditions however, fully warmed up would usually go away.

 

Interesting. The stock tensioner wasn't as shot as I thought when I took it off. It was tighter than I remember and it was doing it then with the 02 tensioner on there. New tensioner was an AC Delco 12560344.