Could you describe the ruckus?

Is it a rhythmic chirp or a continuous squeal more prevalent just after starting the car ( High alternator load )

When you mist water on both sides of the belt, does the noise go away?

What sort of wear are you getting?

The bearing can be very dry and still tight. If you spin the fan bearing, does it coast without resistance? If so, there is very little to no grease in the bearing. Same goes for the water pump except it will retain some resistance due to seal drag.

As for the flat pulleys that ride on the back of the belt, they get polished leading to a chirp , chirp as the belt slips / grabs as the belt walks across the pulley. A spritz of water will temporarily make this go away. The more permanent fix is to sand the surface with 80 grit. Even with this, I've had the hard smooth belt label make noise requiring some sanding to quite it down.

Continuous at startup and before the belt warms up, it'll also do it under acceleration.

I'll have to have my friend try that, he was finishing up the job since I had class today.

Before I was getting fraying on the back side of the belt (though I think that may have been related to the alternator I was using before) and the ribs were losing a lot of rubber. We'll run it for a while to see if it's getting the fraying still, if that's the case, I can replace the fan clutch bracket (with OEM), water pump (with Laso), and the crank pulley if that somehow got out of alignment. I'm planning on replacing the engine in this thing in about 6 months anyway with the one out of my 91K Sportline when I put a 3.0L in mine so it's really not all that important, I doubt this belt will fail between now and then as the last belt was still usable but worn after 15K.


This is probably the case, the fan pulley looks pretty shiny. This will be the first thing I test next time I have the chance. I know the fan clutch I have on it (Sprinter clutch with 606 blades) probably puts a decent load on it at startup.

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Current: 1975 450SEL, 83 300D, 88 Yugo GVX, 90 300D OM603 swap, 91 F150 4.6 4v swap, 93 190E Sportline LE 3.0L M104 swap, 93 190E Sportline LE Megasquirt, 03 Sprinter, 06 E500 4Matic wagon.