Have had a very noisy drive/fan belt problem for many months now and have only just resovled the issue.
Started off by :
replacing the belt - slight improvement
Replaced the bushes ( made by a mate of mine ) which were very badly worn in the belt tensioner- a bit better again.
Replaced the bearing in the idler pulley- slight improvemnet but still very noisy.
Now getting very frustrated so asked my mate who is an engineer to check the whole assembly out and make new bushes if necessary.
To his amazement he found that the pully itself was out of shape by several mm.
The pulley is not a solid piece , the driving outer surface is only about 2.5mm thick so is susceptable to damage by sticks or stones getting in between the belt and thus distorting the wheel.
This was causing the whole tensioner to flap around causing ALL of the noise. Obviously just replacing the pulley bearing is not the answer unless you check the pulley for correct roundness.
Got a Commodore pulley Nuline part # EP001 put it all back and it's PERFECT.
Also did not have to take the shroud off , just the small clip on part and the whole removal took about 10 minutes.
Unless you buy a whole new unit ( very expensive ) then it's wise to check the pulley unless you get a new one and it's cheaper to get the Commodore pulley ($25) with fitted bearing than just buying a bearing ( $35 ) and bunging it in the original pulley.
This all took a long time to work out what was wrong and I would never have suspected that the original pulley was out of shape and was only found thanks to my engineering mate.
At last all is back to normal !!!!!!!
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