Anyone using this? How much should I tighten it down? I recently had a loud chirp and fixed it by replacing my belt with a gatorback and it’s gone. Car sat for a day and when I turned it on the chirp is back. No where near the same loudness but it’s there. Went away after car warmed up. So I’m guessing the belt got stretched because it’s too tight? The belt has some play when I twist it.
Reichard racing manual tensioner
- Thread starter Bullyent
- Start date
Belt squeal is always a symptom of another problem, never the other way around. And it can generally be placed into 1 of 3 categories: worn belt, pulley misalignment or bad pulley/pulley bearing. It appears the problem was there with both the old and new belt. So by process of elimination, that is not the issue. As far as belt tension, I have the same tensioner on my car. And when all else is correct, tension has little if any at all affect on noise. I've ran anywhere from 20 lb/ft on the tensioner bolt to as high as 45 lb/ft. Makes no diff other than putting an unnecessary amount of stress on the crank snout. If you are certain you do not have a pulley alignment issue and the problem goes away once a little heat gets into the engine, I would start looking at all your idler pulleys and bearings.
@Nadra initially I thought it was the bearings so I got new bearings for my billetflow idlers. Noise was still there. Someone told me to spray the belt with water and noise immediately went away and went back as the water dried. So I changed the belt and the squeak was gone. It may be misaligned but I see no belt wobble of any kind at each pulley.
Yeah it was really annoying to have hopefully found the solution but it’s still there. Once I changed my belt it was finally gone but just today I started it after sitting for a day there was a slight chirp but it’s gone now. So I’m thinking maybe the tensioner is too tight? Like it made the belt stretch to the figure of the pulleys so when it cranks there might have been little stretch marks. Not too sure what happened during the one day it sat
What belt are you running?
Continental gatorback poly-V
That's definitely the best belt to minimize chirp. Other items to have, quality dual bearing pulleys/idlers, a whipple adjustable pulley is advisable too, along with a tensioner brace like this from metco.
Tensioner Support Plate, : Metco Motorsports
That combo of items will live a long time at 22psi, and be quiet. And that's with the factory tensioner arm in a proper position along the indicator tab. Excellent alignment.
Yeah...interesting thread because I actually just finished trouble shooting this EXACT thing on my car. I ran the gamut on replacing things thinking it was a belt, a pulley bearing, bad tensioner, rebuilt alternator thinking it was bad bearings there, switched back to the exact tensioner combo c6zhombre says above...literally everything. Nothing I did worked. Same exact symptoms as what you are having: intermittent belt squeal. There sometimes and not others. I finally figured mine out after 9 months of trouble shooting: I had an alignment issue. Not saying that is you problem, but it was mine. Process of elimination, it was the only thing left and that is exactly what it was. Turns out, when we had the engine out of my car 3 years ago, we incorrectly installed that billet aluminum plate from Metco that relocates the idler pulley needed to run their lower crank pulley. Once we discovered that and put everything back together right....problem gone. For good. If I were you, I would go over everything on that serpentine drive with a very fine tooth comb and look for an alignment issue.
Inner belt?
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