Serp. belt and Heat Problem

The car started to make a chirping noise coming from the serp. belt area...I popped the hood and it chirps sometimes at idle or when I'm accelerating...sometimes smell burnt rubber abit...The belt looks fine but any ideas? Tensioner, pulleys? I read somewhere that if I replace the belt to rough up the pulleys if they are glazed over to prevent it from happening again. Not really sure how to proceed.

And in another unrelated problem I think...my heater stopped working yesterday afternoon. Still blows lots of air...just cold! Tried again this morning and only cold air is coming out. Could this be related to my serp. belt problem? Also, I just realized my coolant is way low, like I think the tank you pour into is empty...altho the car temp. nevers goes about 1/3 on the dial....then again it is 18F out this morning. I just got this car off my sister and had everything checked out but somehow the coolant level had slipped by me.

Any help is much needed! Thanks!
John

Welcome to the forum!

Your issues have been addressed numerous times on the forum, so rather than retype everything, I'll guide you to the search feature.

From the Taurus forum main page, towards the upper right, is a button labeled "Search this forum." Use this feature to search for keywords "waterpump", "impeller", "backflush", "tensioner" and "idler." You'll probably want to perform multiple searches with one key word each to maximize the results.

For future reference, please include the model year and engine (3.0L Vulcan, 3.0L Duratech, 3.8L, 3.0L SHO, or 3.2L SHO) of the subject vehicle when posting.

-Rod

The chirping sound is very familiar to me. It's one of the pulley bearings starting to go bad, either the idler or the tensioner. The cold seems to always bring out things that are near their end when they were previously just fine. Probably you can just hear where it is coming from by listening up close while it's running just watch for loose clothes, hair. Using a long bar, srewdriver, etc. placed carefully on suspicious noise maker and listening at the end of it will prove out, sometimes a short tube, hose or pipe may actually isolate the noise location better, it just depends on the noise as I experienced recently for myself. You may as well replace both pulleys at the same time since they theoretically will wear out at the same time and will have to disengage the belt. The tensioner has to be removed to change the pulley on it, if it is on the 3.8L. I don't know about the other engines. It's also akward to remove and especially put back on as you have to lay under the car and reach far up to work on it in a tight area.

I thought maybe you had no antifreeze getting to your heater core that is under the dash or maybe an operational issue with the heater controls and doors, but I think you hit it first. Top off your antifreeze, making sure the radiator is full, if it even has its own cap, then fill the overflow tank to the hot full line. I like to do that instead of the cold full line so I don't don't risk not filling it enough and hopefully won't have to refill it later. Get your car up to operating temp, maybe just drive it when you normally would, so that the cooling/radiatot can work out all ot the trapped air. Then the coolant in the tank will go back in when the system temp and pressure drops such that the overflow coolant will go back intl your rad cooling system. When the engine is warming up, if possible find and grab the two hoses at the back of the engine going through the firewall. If both are warm/hot good, if one or both are no, bad. You can do this test before you do any of the antifreeze adding, and I expect the hoses to be cold. If warm/hot, but still no heat, you might have a heater coil blackage or a blend door problem. You can try and feel around under the dash and see if you feel any heat when your hoses aare hot. Someone else will have to pick up aafter me if it is a blend door problem. I'm also not sure what is the best way to fix a plugged heater core, but a radiator repair shop should be able to do that. Some of this also depends if you do the work yourself or just looking for info.