swake457

Does anyone have any good recommendations to silence an occasionally squealing accessory belt?

Backstory....The accessory belt on my 05 RL is just a little over a year old now. About a couple months after it was first installed I noticed it would occasionally squeal at 2,000 rpm. No other symptoms and the car drove just fine. Happened to be at the dealer for an oil change the first time it started and had them take a look. The belt, of course, looked brand new and the pulley's all looked fine. No glazing of the surface. They said they just wiped it down, maybe something got on it. The noise went away for another month or so. Fast forward to a short road trip and I'm roughly 150 miles away from my home area and the belt decides it's time to squeal again. My wife is with me and we're on the highway. It sounds like a pig is being strangled! My wife is just about ready to stuff tissues in her ears to block it out and on a whim jokingly suggests spraying it with WD40. Now of course that's bad. But again, out of pure necessity and knowing I had another ~150 or so miles to go, I realize I do have a small spray bottle of meguiars detailing spray, for plastics, rubber, etc. I take a huge chance pulling over and just barely spritz the upper pulley/belt area with it, and I mean *barely*, and the squeal stops right away. It was all of maybe 3 or 4 drops of the stuff. I make it all the home and even a few weeks more before it starts up again. This continues to this day. Except until three days ago and now it's every day, and sometimes after 15 or so miles when it starts squealing again. I had my mechanic take a look and again it looks OK, but he says we should probably just replace the belt and inspect the pulleys/tensioner while he's in there. He can't take the car in for another few days, he's all booked up, and I still need to drive this. Looking for any tricks to silencing this squeal until I can get it in. My mechanic says to avoid those belt sprays, but I'm not sure I have much of a choice.

swake457

After a bit of research, I'm ordering a few quick parts and maybe early next week I'll replace this drive belt myself. My only problem is it's so damn cold out right now. Woke up to -6 degrees this morning. Brrr. Well my second problem is gorilla forearms. I can't get my arms down the main crank pulley at all. May need to go at from underneath. If it's too cold I may have to have my mechanic pop it on for me.

Anyone ever use (made by Goodyear)? I read a few opinions that seem to think they run a little quieter than OEM, but more importantly they tend to tolerate very minor alignment issues that can cause occasional squeaks, which sounds like my issue. OEM vs Gatorback are only a few dollars different, so it's not going to break the bank. I would normally go OEM, and may still, but this sounded interesting.



I did manage to get a good look at the pulleys and the drive belt today. The belt looks very good. No cracks, glazing or fraying of the edges. The pulleys don't appear to have any wobble in them either. I did notice very slight side to side movement of the belt over the tensioner. Just a hint of left-right movement. The tensioner itself doesn't appear to show any movement like that.

I figure I'll start with replacing the drive belt and go from there.

FoxRL

Mine did this - turned out to be the Harmonic Balancer. I remember smelling rubber briefly then losing power steering - i knew exactly what had happended. The balancer looked like a pizza cut in half.

swake457

So far no burning smells. Motor seems to be running normally too. The squeal usually kicks in when I start the car, but you really don't hear it until you hit 2000+ rpm. If I pop the hood I hear it, rev it and it's much louder.

I'm swinging by my closest Honda dealer tonight to pick up an OEM belt. More expensive than online, but I feel like I may need to tackle this over the weekend, if I can.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

the simple way of diagnosing where the squeal is coming from is to simply take off the accessory belt, then start the car.

it's usually a pulley/tensioner and not the belt itself.

I use gatorbacks on all of my cars and my friends Acura's.
its not the belt, its one of the pulleys.

question; were the pulleys changed out when you changed out the accessory belt?

swake457

as far as I know, the pulleys were not replaced. The alternator is three years old and power steering and AC are original.