My max has been plagued with these annoying little buggers ever since i bought it. Most of the time they are pretty quite and run like normal belts do. But when the temp, humidity, weather, day, year, president or what ever changes, these belts get LOUD! Belt dressing does help for about 5 mins but then it just comes back. Sometimes its a sqeaking sound, and some times it sounds like a metal scraping metal sound. The dealer claims the power steering pump is leaking fluid on to them. But in 12 months of owning the car, I have yet to see even the slightest drop in the level of pwr steering fluid. (I have it marked.)

So what should i do?? Is there a way to fix this? Or should i just be looking to purcahse some new belts in the near future?

Thanks for any help or info,
Chris

 

Tighten them.....if they are old replace them....ans look into that PS pump leak....

 

how would you go about tightening belts? .... sorry if I'm intruding on the post ... but I think it's related

 

on the serpentine belt (the wide one with little channels on one side) there is a tensioner pulley right smack in the middle towards the top (if you are on the passenger side looking down into the engine bay) There is a 14mm nut on the shaft holding the pulley. Loosen it, but not too much. Now, there is a 14mm shaft thing that points straight up. It's hooked to the pulley shaft and up through a bracket. To tighten, one would turn it clockwise since it is left-hand threaded. To loosen to change a belt, one would turn it counter clockwise. One important note: spray the crap out of the tightener with some WD40 or something similar. Mine seized and broke in half and i was stranded for days until my dad could take it into work and weld it back together again.

 

No problem, I was just about ot ask that myself.

 

i had the same problem when i changed my belts, all i did was tighten the crap out of them and the stopped.

 

also new belts are going to stretch after a few days so if u replace them and the squealing comes back just give them another turn...and yes wd40 the hell out of the tensioner they tend to freeze up and break....i ahve done it twice and the part is 45 buc frmo courtesyparts.com.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I'm gonna try tightening them today but just for reference in the future; About how much is it to replace the belts provided that i do the work myself?

Thanks

 

belts are no more than 20 bux a piece and thats at the higest end of the price spectrum...there are 2 of them

 

I bought a new alternator installed it and I had the worst time getting the belts to stop squealing. And when the belts squeal on a Max it sounds like Bloody Murder.

I took off the belt tensioner and it mounting bracket only to find the rear 1" spacer missing along with several other critical components. Needless to say the guy I bought the car from "forgot" to tell me parts of the drive train were missing!!?!?

After purchasing a new belt tensioner and belts all the squealing went away,

A tip I did learn in the process, assemble the tensioner on a very smooth flat surface and set the pulley close to it's finally position so you only have to adjust a small increment. USE the OPEN end of a 14mm wrench and you'll never have belt squeal, or at least I didn't

Hope this helps

 

real easy, i'm about to go do mine right now.......

 

That spacer is no where near 1", but I can see how it would cause a problem even if it was missing. I assembled the belt tensioner with the bracket still bolted to the car. It was a real PITA. I used grease to stick everything together so it wouldn't fall off of the shaft until I could get that 14mm nut back on. And why the open end of the wrench? Closed works just as good too. To tighten, you hafta wedge your arm up between the lower splash gaurds to put some real torque on it.

 

You don't have to follow my recommendations, if you like doing sloppy work please continue on...

 

I didn't want to make a new thread, so I'll just post in here.

I am changing my belts as we speak. I got the A/C compressor belt off, and....cut the power steering belt off.

I am quite confused with this tensioner. It is left handed thread, but whether I got left or right, to loosen/tighten whatever it is, I can not slide this belt over the pulley.

I am stumped and getting quite frustrated. Much help is appreciated.

I have loosended the power steering bolt. It has to be the tensioner, but it is just not coroporating.