Hi everyone, I need some help here. I just put a new battery in my jeep because it was dead and battery was old, and when I went to start my jeep, the most god awful loud screeching sound was coming from the belt. I quickly shut down the engine because it sounded terrible. I almost think the belt wasn't turning, but I was by myself, so I couldn't check with it running cause I didn't want to leave it running too long. I have recently replaced both water pump and power steering pump, and had no issues till today. Since my jeep was dead, could it be a problem with the alternator as well? Putting a new battery in caused it to start right up. any help would be greatly appreciated. It was honestly the loudest worst screeching I have ever heard.

 

How much play in belt? Shouldn't be more than 1/2 inch a side. Try tightening it, or pull belt off and recheck all pulleys for looseness and/or drag

 

belt feels really tight. Could it be that my alternator may be shot and the pulley on the alt has seized up causing the noise?

 

have a spray bottle of WATER ready and turn on the jeep. spray the belt with water and if the sound goes away its usually an alignment problem. if the sound continues or gets worse then it is a loose belt. the belt shouldn't go past 90 degrees when you turn it, or in other words its horizontal right now and should not go past a complete vertical position when twisting it.

I'm not sure what will happen if you have a frozen pulley, if it will continue or go away but you can check the pulleys. If its an older jeep like mine then this part will be a little hard but you can take off the belt and try to twist all the pulleys by hand to make sure none of them are frozen.

the water trick is easy to tell if you just need to tighten the belt up.

 

thanks for the trick with the water. I will try that tomorrow and see what happens

 

Okay, so I have some new information. I had my wife start it this morning so I could watch the belt. When started, the belt barely moves at a very slow pace and the screeching is unbearable. What could this mean? Belt loose?, pulley seized? Belt too tight? any help would be appreciated. This is driving me nuts!!! I would say the belt maybe moved two inches in the 5 seconds the vehicle was on for. I could literally watch it creep along

 

theres been a million threads on this. Just tighten the belt