97 taurus belt trouble

Quazarz · 07-20-2007, 10:49 AM

Hello, here's my problem...

Some time in November last year, one of the pullies on my taurus broke, after we had that replaced, it's been a downhill procces. With the new pully, the car squeeled like crazy, the pully the mechanic put on looked different but he swore up and down that that one was right. After 2 annoying months we started to look for the 'right pully', no one seemed to be able to sell us an original one, then , a miracle! About a month ago, the belt simply shredded on the way home from work, lots of noise, the liner on the hood is gone but hey, after we put on a new belt, there was no more squeeling

Yesterday on my way home from work, I heard the same aweful noise again, the noise of a shredding belt... I am rather tired of this, not to mention the 80min wait on the hot MS roadside

, any advise?

shorod · 07-20-2007, 02:39 PM

Welcome to the forum!

Does this seem to only happen when you are using the air conditioning or defroster? Are there any other pulleys that may be seized or have bad bearings? With the belt now off, spin all the pulleys before putting the new belt on to attempt to determine if you had a bad bearing somewhere, or one that is about to fail. You probably won't be able to spin the power steering pulley easily by hand, so just check that one for play in the shaft.

-Rod

RickMN · 07-20-2007, 06:34 PM

This isn't as complicated as it seems. It's either a pulley that's out of alignment, or it's a failing bearing in the alternator, PS pump, A/C, etc. If you hear squealing again, isolate the source of the problem using this procedure: http://free-auto-repair-advice.blogs...d-squeals.html

Quazarz · 07-21-2007, 10:06 AM

thank you guys!
Our main issue seems to be the type of belt we use. I do not know many technical terms but the bets that don't have the cloth feel to it squeel like piggies, and that is what every one tries to sell us. Then again, the one that didn't squeel lasted about a month before the car ate the thing.
To answer Shorod, it squeels all the time, it squeels when you crank the car till you take the key out of the ignition. The only thing that seemed to help was freezing weather. All the pullies are new but once again, every one sells us different looking pullies which makes it harder to figure out who is right and who is wrong on this, they sure all have fancy computers that all claim they are right. I think we're going to used Rick's advice, we tried to locate it last time and thought we had it because the noise stopped, looks like we were wrong

shorod · 07-21-2007, 10:43 AM

Yep, if it squeals all the time, the problem is probably not the pulley itself but some accessory loading the belt and causing it to slip. With a squealing belt, it's probably pretty difficult to determine if the alternator bearings are also making noise.

-Rod

Quazarz · 07-22-2007, 08:15 AM

well, we found a belt called 'the quiet belt', so far, it is doing what it promised to do, I will let you know in a month or so if the car ate this one too. We tried to rotate all the pullies first and did not hear anything so I think we are good. Now if all those pro carplaces would have sold us the right stuff to start with... I drive a 97 taurus for a reason, it's a cheap car with good gassmileage, I can't afford 4 belts and 2 series of pullies every full months

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