Hey all,

I have a fairly good squeal in the engine when I rev it up. I think it may be coming from the alternator belt. Upon inspection it doesnt look straight. The pulley on the bottom of the engine doesn't look like it is perfectly in line with the alternator.

The pulley on the engine appears to have a slight wobble to it.

This may not even be the problem but it seems the most likely culprit. Anyone know how I should deal with this?

Thanks!

Is it the pulley on the bottom of the engine (crank pulley) or the water pump pulley. It sounds awful unusual for a crank pulley to do that. It could be the water pump pulley wobbling if the water pump bearing is worn, or even the alternator bearings if that pulley is wobbling. That could even come from the belts being too tight. The alternator bracket could be bent or even the wrong bracket.

Have you replaced the water pump recently? There are long nose and short nose water pumps for small block Chevies. I believe a C3 uses a short nose. The wrong one could put the pulley too far forward and out of line, but that should be obvious if it's the case.

One thing that could be the most likely...the belt itself is bad. Sometimes if a belt isn't made correctly, it looks like there's a big wobble to it. Check that first.

Are ALL the belts installed? I had a squeal I could not correct when I had my A/C belt off. It helps drive the water pump as well as the compressor. Another thing you could try is dish soap on the belts. Do one at a time to determine which one is the culprit. Carefully squirt the dishwashing fluid on each belt while the engine is running and rev it up to see if the noise goes away. The fluid is obviously not a permanent fix, but it might get you going in the right direction.

Yes start with the belt and then alignment. Way too tight can bend pulleys. Too loose will squeal with no other problems. Soap works well, so does WD-40. Put it on the belt and it temp stops the squeal. You can use a string and pull it across the front face of the pulleys. If nothing is in the way, a straight edge across the pullys works better than the string. If the string touches all of the front edges, and is straight, the alignment is okay. If the string bends or does not touch one pully, the alignment is off. As far as the crank pulley wobble, it may be a bent pully, or could be a front harmonic balancer starting to fail.

Ken Styer

You might want to check that the dampener isn't coming apart. There seems to have been a rash of that problem in the past 6 months. Joe