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I'm going to try to swap the alternator belt and the Power Steering/AC belt over the weekend (first time trying anything like this and I'm not very skilled at this, I'm an IT admin). Are there any issues I should be aware of and any preferred brand for these? I don't trust myself to do the timing belt, so that's going to get done by a professional once I have funds since it's past due.

gates brand is a favorite

i think those belts are pretty straight forward, wont run into any problems

i didnt do mine myself, i just had them done when i had my timing belt done .. i also wasnt going to try that on my own

I've had good luck with the duralast belts from autozone. I tried the goodyear belts and it frayed and fell off within 2 weeks. Gates is definitely the preferred brand, but my autozone doesn't carry them.

Its a pretty easy job. You'll just need to remove the splash sheild under your passenger side. I think there are 3 10mm bolts holding it up. (mines in my trunk right now whoops..) 18-21mm Wrench will allow you to pull the tensioner back and take of the PS/AC belt.

After that ones off, you have to loosen the 2pivot bolts on the alternator, one you can get at from the side, and the other is down below. After that, the end bolt will move the alt and relax the tension so you can take it off. ( I think those are 13-15mm bolts)

Thanks guys. I've never had a car long enough where I needed to change the belts. I'm tackling that this weekend since it looks like the accessory belt is fairly worn and I'm almost positive that's the source of the pigeon sounding squeaking coming from in there. Oil change, disc brakes, plugs, wires, simple things like that have been easy and I prefer to do those on my own (why pay a shop to do what you can do yourself for less than 1/2 the cost), just trying to learn more and more.

Sabersoul wrote:Thanks guys. I've never had a car long enough where I needed to change the belts. I'm tackling that this weekend since it looks like the accessory belt is fairly worn and I'm almost positive that's the source of the pigeon sounding squeaking coming from in there. Oil change, disc brakes, plugs, wires, simple things like that have been easy and I prefer to do those on my own (why pay a shop to do what you can do yourself for less than 1/2 the cost), just trying to learn more and more.

That's the purpose of this site! Read up, learn about your car and get to wrenching on it. I love knowing my car's in good working order because I'm the one who did the work!

Later
Allex

Meh, my belts are original, and have outlasted the clutch. 135000 ish miles. (need to do some math for exact mileage) I really do need to get some new ones.
They will prolly go with out warning, like the pressure plate.

You should really get on that timing belt thing.

They have a tendancy to cause the valves to become very intimate with the pistons when they break.


o and Gates >> all

occasional demons wrote:Meh, my belts are original, and have outlasted the clutch. 135000 ish miles. (need to do some math for exact mileage) I really do need to get some new ones.
They will prolly go with out warning, like the pressure plate.

I'm almost at 94K and probably 2/3 of that at least has been fairly hard city driving. My belts are still the OEM, but I wanna get my car running better. I've only had two instances where I haven't really been able to drive my car and only one of those was mechanical. About 10K miles ago the torque converter went and shredded my transmission forcing me to have it rebuilt. The other instance was the day after Christmas in '07 when someone broke in to my car, damaging the door, breaking the window when they couldn't pry away the frame, ripping open the HVAC bezel, stealing my radio, popping the hood, cutting off my battery cables and stealing my battery with it. Yeah, that was a LOT of fun. Was a month before I got my car back thanks to the insurance dragging their feet.

o, when you said past due I thought you meant you were over 100,000 miles.

Make sure you do the belt around 100,000 miles

racer12306 wrote:o, when you said past due I thought you meant you were over 100,000 miles.

Make sure you do the belt around 100,000 miles

I'm going to get it done before then. My fiancee and I are traveling to WI this summer so I want to have my car in top shape before we make that drive.

racer12306 wrote:They have a tendancy to cause the valves to become very intimate with the pistons when they break.

Are all belts 100k miles, or just timing?

timing

the others vary

racer12306 wrote:timing

the others vary

Damn, I was hoping I could put them all off longer. My SXT is coming up on 70k, you don't happen to know the mileage for the other belts do you?

by vary i mean they vary on how long they last. if the belts don't have any cracks in them then they are still good to go.

start to look into changing them when you start to see cracking.

Well okay. I was just wondering what the owners manual says.

I think it says replace as needed and there isn't a specific mileage.

Well, went to swap the belts today, got the wheel and splash shield off so as to get a better look, and they're pristine. No cracks, nothing. So after taking a metal rod to the PS Pump and the AC Compressor to listen to them, I'm 99% certain that it's coming from the power steering pump. Should I try to flush and refill it to see if the noise goes away, or just say screw it and swap the power steering pump? I wish I knew of a good way to describe the noise.... Kinda like what a UFO sounds like in an old sci-fi movie, but not as high pitched. And makes it for a second after shutting the car off. Like it's bubbling and stops to fill back up when you shut the car off...

What year was your car?

You should fill out your garage or signature so we know if the future without asking.

Sorry about that. '03 SXT Auto with 94K Miles

Ugh, chasing this noise is driving me NUTS!

It's not the AC Compressor, it's not the PS pump, it's not the belts. This all started after replacing the PCV Valve and the Valve Cover. It seems like the PCV Valve is either letting too much or not enough air into the valve cover. Removing the oil cap while the car is running lets out a hiss like a vacuum seal has been broken and after that, the noise stops until you block the hole for the oil cap with your hand (which sucks your hand to it) or put the oil cap back on. I'm about to go and just buy all the parts for the PCV system from the dealer and just replace them all. There aren't any leaks anywhere that I have found, the hoses are clean and I've replaced the PCV Valve twice (bought the first from AutoZone and the 2nd from O'Reilly, but looks like they were built by the same manuf. and just repackaged.) Any other thoughts?

Check the inlet for blockage. Mine did the same. the inlet tube was blocked.

occasional demons wrote:Check the inlet for blockage. Mine did the same. the inlet tube was blocked.

That's exactly my plan for tonight. I'm going to take the valve cover off, take off the little metal piece that's screwed in to the valve cover and check for something blocking the inlet tube. The hose itself isn't blocked and I did clean the hoses this past weekend to check for blockages.

Just to verify, since I didn't have time to finish posting: it is the tube in the rear of the cover, that fresh air comes in. Mine had gotten blocked, causing it to pull a vacuum in the crankcase. Air should be exchanged in the VC, not a vacuum.

That was it! It wasn't any kind of carbon build up from reusing the hose, when they assembled the cover, they didn't make sure that there was no plastic covering the inside of the inlet hole. Took the cover off, knocked the plastic out and made sure I got it out of the cover before I put it back on. Noise is gone! Thanks everyone!

Sabersoul wrote:
Removing the oil cap while the car is running lets out a hiss like a vacuum seal has been broken and after that, the noise stops until you block the hole for the oil cap with your hand (which sucks your hand to it) or put the oil cap back on.

That alone solved it for me. Sometimes it just takes the right info.

Glad you don't have to bash your head against a wall now!