Last week I blew up the heater control valve in my 1999 Ford Ranger 4x4 with the 3.0 V6 and automatic transmission. I was merging into traffic, had to kick it down because the fellow following a semi wouldn't let me in. Pretty much as soon as my tachometer hit 5500, one of the two leads on the heater control valve assembly gave way. Truck dumped probably a gallon and a half to two gallons of coolant in the quarter mile it took to go on the shoulder and stop. Had it towed home and replaced the heater control valve and put it all back together. Everything's back to normal. I hear squealing from the belt that I didn't hear before that little incident. Should I replace the belt, since it was most likely drenched in coolant? None of the pulleys feel gritty or hang up. This is really the only thing I can think that would cause a squealy belt in such a short amount of time.
I would remove the belt and see if the noise goes away or not.
How many miles on the belt?
Try taking it off and just scrubbing with soapy water.
There are very cheap belt checkers you can get.
Gates sent me one for free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iACIT-_pzCU
Belt only has 30-40k miles and 2 years on it. The noise went away yesterday. I sprayed water on the power steering pulley a few times and the noise went away for a few minutes. We got a ton of rain the last few days and I drove it in the rain. No more belt noise. Very strange.
sounds like just coolant residue