Squealing and can't find what it is...
 

Hey all,
I have a problem with a squeal when I start my car and its completely a cold start. Like in the mornings or something. I have been experiencing this for a little while, and had a water pump go bad on me as well as a p/s leak. Well, I changed the p/s pump, reservoir, and water pump, and still hear this squeal. It does it from time of start up (only on cold starts) till it reaches normal operating temp. Then it will not do it again until the car has sit long enough to completely cool off. If I stop and eat, or go watch a movie, I can come out and start it and its fine. What could this be? I do know that the water pump was leaking pretty bad thru the weep hole and was running down onto the A/C pump. Could this be whats making all the noise? Or could it just be the belts? It really doesn't sound like a belt squeal. Thanks for all info.

Have you replaced the belts? Antifreeze can cause them to make noise. Do you tensioners work properly? Make sure there working correctly also.

I fixed my squeal by replacing the idler pulley. It was real cheap and probably the easiest thing you do other than replacing your air filter.

See if you can access this page for more information on the pulley.

I took my serp belt off and started the motor and there was no squeal. The idler and tensioner pulleys didn't squeal when turned by hand, but I bought one of each and changed them one at a time to see which one it was. It was the idler pulley.

You COULD repack the bearing if you want. On mine the bearings were sealed by plastic covers that were easily removed by a very small screwdriver.

Hope this helps...

It sounds like the idler pulley.Mine was bad,had same syptoms.$18 bucks Oreillys.

Thanks guys. I will try removing the belt and seeing if it goes away. I have not replaced the belts and the car has 117K miles on it, so they have had time to soak all that antifreeze in good :(. I also was going to try spraying a little belt dressing onto them and see if that helps.

My car does that too , I just never thought twice about it because my formula is still 10x less squeaky than my old car (88 olds pos). I think I'll pick up one of those too cuz you kinda lose the coolness of a muscle car if its squeaking like a 20 yr old civic

LOL, I hear you there, LUNA! There is nothing more embarassing than walking to your car and seeing other people walking and looking at it saying "Wow, thats a nice ride" or something like that. You start walking all proud and stuff, then get in and start it up. All you hear is SQUEALLLLLLLLLLLL :bang: . That sucks, man!

I found that my A/C tensioner was doing the squeeling on mine . I went to the dealer and bought a new tensioner and idler pulley . What I found out is that the pulley on the tensioner is the same pulley as the idler pulley . Its about $50 bucks cheaper too . So if the only problem is is a squeeling A/C tensioner pulley , get the idler pulley and put that on the tensioner and youll have about $50 more in your pocket .

well I could sure use that right now! Thanks 1999T/A!

Your welcome , I help when I can . . .

i had my ac tensioner go bad and then the regular tensioner lol its all fixed now, i just took off my ac belt for a while to make it shut up