A little while back I joined a post about a buzzing or whining noise coming from the engine (I compared the noise to the whine of a supercharger). To clarify, the noise was a high pitch whine which changed with the rpm’s/acceleration. Definitely an attention grabber – it added significant engine noise.

This afternoon the noise stopped and I found the culprit – a fatigued belt idler pulley (the top one, closet to the engine cover/shroud). It actually disintegrated into several pieces.

I went to pick the kids up and noticed the engine was quiet…but thought I heard a little clanking noise. Within a minute I knew I was fawked. I heard something come apart under the hood and within seconds the red “battery charge” light popped on, coupled with the loss of power steering. I looked under the hood and saw the serpentine belt was not connected, and initially I thought the water pump seized. I drove home (only about 1.5 miles), but it was 90 degrees and without the cooling system working, the car nearly overheated in that short amount of time.

I looked up water pumps on the net and saw they really didn’t match the location of the pulley (coupled with the fact the car was not overheating prior to the failure). So I looked in the manual and saw it was the belt idler pulley (the manual is also very helpful since it has a diagram for the serpentine belt route/layout).

I picked up a new idler pulley at the stealership ($44); loosened the pulley nut using a Torx socket and bam, it was done. But what about the serpentine belt? Thing was about 2” short of being able to be popped over/back on the top idler pulley.

…then I saw my cherry picker nearby. Strapped it to the serp belt; gave the jack a few pumps and the belt easily slipped over the top idler pulley.

All better now, nice and quiet again.
Total time to fix…30 minutes, most of which was scratching me head trying to think of a better way to get the serpentine belt on.

 

yeah thats really not the best thing to use to put your belt on, you prolly didnt do any damage to it but thats why those crazy germans developed a belt tensioner, its the pulley thats to the right and a little higher of the crank pulley, there is either going to be a male end torx on it (old style) and you use that torx and turn it counter clockwise to slacken the belt, OR there is a 17mm under the pulley itself (new style) same operation. If you have the old style, I would reccomend checking play of this as they do wear out about the same time as the idlers. Check for side to side play, and check the surface of the pulley, (should be smooth with a groove in the middle) if its smooth and the groove in the middle is kind of sharp, and its leaving marks in the belt Id replace that too.
good job on fixing your own car!!!

 

That's good info to have. There was enough flex in the belt/pulley system to put it up and above safely - I hate messing with belt tensioners. Like you said, probably a good idea to replace it too though!

 

The same exact thing happened to me this past Saturday morning at 1:30 on the freeway . Very Very annoying considering that I just brought the car in to the shop 3 weeks ago and they replaced the belt tensioner, but those morons apparently did not inspect the idler pulley (which seized and broke apart). It was interesting driving that car off the freeway to some neighborhood with no power steering (very heavy feeling) and the temperature gauge at 120 degrees. All thanks to that wonderful shop. I definitely will not recommend them to anyone again. Sorry for the rant guys.

Anyway Thrillhouse do you have anymore details on how to put the belt back on or does anyone have info? I may want to do it myself if the shop gives me a hard time. Thanks.