Intel's Ronler Acres Plant

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Squeaky Wheel


My truck developed a squeak. It sounded like the water pump was going bad, but it would go away within a mile of driving. Then I noticed that when I pulled up to the first couple of stop signs after I left the house the squeaking would stop. Oh, no, I'm thinking, this is gonna be bad. Probably something in the four wheel drive has gone TU and it's gonna be $500. After a couple of weeks I finally break down and take it to the mechanic (Heaton's Garage). He opens the hood and declares that the problem is likely to be the serpentine belt. The truck has 95K miles, the belt's never been replaced, so this might be a reasonable course of action. The back side of the belt does look a little glazed. The front side (the side with the all the V-grooves) has a bunch of cracks, but it does not appear to be missing any chunks, which is one diagnostic I have heard. But Eric has always done right be me, and so if he wants to replace the belt, so be it. I come pick it up later that day and as I drive away the squeak is still there, but since then it has been silent.

Eric's next suspect, if the belt didn't fix the squeak, was the tensioner.

So I suspect what happened was that the tensioner (or some other pulley that rides against the flat side of the belt) is getting a little hard to turn in it's old age, and the glazed surface of the belt is not providing enough traction to turn the uncooperative pulley. When the pulley finally did break loose ... hmm, my train of logic breaks down here.

Anyway, the squeak is gone, at least temporarily.

Update January 2017 replace missing image.

2 comments:

Eunoia said...

Look at the secondary air pump.
Its bearings may be shot or the housing have a crack/hole?

Chuck Pergiel said...

Secondary air pump? I don't think there is even a primary air pump.