serpintine belt squeeks

[j cAT]

Originally Posted by Airjer_

Di-electric grease will not effect the belt. Regular grease would not be a good choice.

a new belt should not make any noises...if it does there is a defect here..

use of lubricants will cause slippage decreasing the belt life and possibly damaging the rubber compounds so that they lack the ability to resist wear..

this is a good thing to do if you don't want to spend money on a vehicle thats going to be sold...

[GAT]

Well at this point if the serp. belt goes bad down the road I have another one that is only a month old to put on. Also I am hoping the AC belt replacement takes care of the squeek anyway. Thank you for the advise and all the help from everyone. I would feel like crap if I sold a vehicle to someone with the problem hidden with Grease. I guess thats why I keep my trucks until they are only good for hauling wood or something then sell as is.

[Airjer_]

Belts are designed to resist oil and grease. If they weren't than there would be a lot of belt failures due to the neglected repairs of all the misc. oil leaks that are commonly found on way to many vehicles on the road!

If I recall correctly quality belts are made from nitrile which is highly resistant to a lot of chemicals commonly in automotive applications.

Chrysler actually had a TSB back in the 80's that suggested coating the belt with di-electric grease (which will not effect common "rubber" like materials found in automotive applications, if it did there would be all kinds of degraded ignition components, fuel pump module seals-which they recommend and supply you with a tube of dielectric grease, bad injector o-rings, bloated weather pack seals on electrical connectors, and the list goes on) to help determine whether or not a noise was the belt or not.

I agree that there is likely another problem that isn't overwhelmingly obvious at this point. If this buys the poster some peaceful noise free time until the actual cause is determined than I'm all for it. This has solved the problem on many vehicles that I have personally dealt with. With no ill effects on reliability and durability.

The same thing with flipping the belt (turning the belt around so that it rotates in the opposite direction). I had stumbled on this years ago and to this day can not figure out why it stops squeaking when rotating in one direction but will squeak constantly while rotating in the opposite direction. You can rotate the belt as many times as you would like and it will consistently squeal or not squeal depending on which way it is rotating.