What causes belt squeal? I have a vortech S trim Sq on my 2002 GT. The belt squeal only happens on cold start up. Its a repetetive squeak, squeak, squeak, and its rpm dependent. If i let it idle for a couple minutes to warm up it goes away. The squeal seems to come from the idler pulley area, i sprayed it with some dry lube spray, but it didnt help. Is this anything to worry about?[/align]

 

sounds like the belt is slipping. if its only on cold start up, the belt is loose and because its cold, its not sticky. when it skips it gets warmer causing it get a little more bite on the pulley and the sound goes away. i had this problem for a long time after i got my sc. think i finially fixed it forever now that i dont have a tensioner on my new motor

 

Same problem on copd days on my supercharged Mustang. If it get's too annoying, here's a cheap old school trick.

Take an ordinary bar of soap and hold it under the belt with the engine running. Use just enough pressure so that the belt ridges cut a groove in the soap. After a few revolutions, the squealing should go away.

Not the prettiest solution, but it's a cheap temp fix until it either gets warmer or until you find some other way to maike it go away. And when you do let me know because I have the same problem, lol.

 

hey sam, is it your sc belt that squeels or is it your main belt?

 

I actually cant remember the exact routing off the top of my head to know what route the belt follows (only one belt.) The S/C head unit is located on thedriver's side where the battery used to be. The power steering pump is just to teh left of that. From what it sounds like, it sounds like the belt is slipping and squealing somewhere in the vicinity of the PS pump.

I have the belot off now and I will check each pulley individually just to make sure it's not a pulley, but given that the noise completely stops with teh soap trick, I'm assuming it's the belt. Also given that the belt was just put on around july, I doubt it's bad or anything. I am leaning towards the "cold start" thing, since it only started happening towards the end of fall before i put it away. Of course, if I leave it alone it goes away when it warms up too. I need to find a way to stop it though. Any ideas?

I'll be able to check it out more closely when I get home tonight and into teh garage.

 

if your belt slips at all, it glosses over and makes it not grip for $hit. if the belt as had a chance to slip so much that the belt squeels, the belt has glossed over and its trash. you can run a brand new belt in a week this way so the fact you put it on in july means nothing. this is what rick anderson told me

 

yeah, I agree about the glazed over belt... it trashes them so the squeak never really goes away. Make sure that you have good tension on it, and try maybe applying a little more if you can... I don't know your setup. If more tension doesn't help, new belt it is.

 

Definately sounds like that could be whats happening. I Just got my car back in December and it recently started doing it when the weather got into the 30's. It never did it before that, but this week its been in the 70's and it still does it, but only for like a minute or two. Another thing i was thinking about was that this is the new stock belt that comes with Vortech kits and the 3.60 pulley. But I am running a smaller 3.33 pulley with that same belt. Do you think that maybe since i have breaking it in, that it has streched a tad and is now to loose for the smaller 3.33 pulley? I assumed that a small pulley swap like thatwouldnt require a smaller belt than stock.