I noticed about a month ago that I was starting to hear an intermittent squeaking sound coming from somewhere on my serpentine line on my 1999 Ford Ranger 3.0 4x4. Monday and Tuesday morning, the noise suddenly blew up into an extremely obnoxious squealing noise. The sound echoed around inside the engine bay and it was extremely unpleasant to listen to. I couldn't find a plausible source, mainly because the noise was too loud to stand near. The squealing did stop after about 10 minutes both days, and it has more or less reverted back to the intermittent chirp that it made a month ago, thus far. I checked the belt yesterday, it has some cracks in it, so I ordered an OEM belt to replace it this weekend.
Would just a worn belt cause a squealing noise to come and go like this? I suspect I probably have a bad pulley since the sound went away after it ran for a while, and hasn't come back. I plan on checking them all. I've never messed with a serpentine belt or the pulleys on a vehicle, before. How difficult is it to loosen a belt tensioner? Will a regular socket wrench provide enough leverage for a smaller framed guy, or should I use something more like a breaker bar? Mine is on its own tensioner/pulley assembly. The truck has 262k miles on it, and I considered just replacing the tensioner/pulley assembly too due to possible age, but I'm not sure how often they should be changed. When checking pulley bearings, do you just try to wiggle them and see if they move? This should be relatively easy to figure out, I repaired the air conditioning system in the same truck over the summer and bounced my pressures off of Scotty, and I had them perfect.
Thanks for any advice!
It will be much easier with a breaker bar, or if you slip a piece of pipe over the end of your ratchet handle.
turn all the pulleys by hand make sure turn freely, smoothly and quietly.
While you're in there, you might as well change the tensioner.
Be aware that squealing can also be the result of a failing alternator, power steering pump, AC compressor or clutch etc.
I have a fleeting suspicion that the power steering pump might be on its way out, but I'm not certain. You can hear it hum when you dry turn the steering wheel, such as when you're in a parking lot, and the fluid level is fine. It's not obnoxious, but it's enough to remind me it doesn't have the electronic steering of my 2017 Mustang, haha. I don't hear the hum when I drive.