Want to get your advice before I spend a lot of money at dealer. Have had a squeek / chirping from engine compartment for several months. Dealer claims it's harmonic balancer and it's a $1000+ job to repair. I haven't let him do anything yet.

Symptoms are as follows:
1. Squeeks loudly when cold, noise is proportional to RPMS.
2. As car warms up a bit squeek lessens in intensity and stops at lower RPMS.
3. When car warms up (15miles+) squeek usually disappears
4. If I spray WD40 on the upper belt before car warms up squeek disappears for a while unitl the WD40 wears off.

I've read the other threads, based on those and my symptoms I think I need belts and maybe at worst an idler pulley. I should mention the belts are 5 years old, I have 26k miles on a 99 MN6.

Do you guys think I've diagnosed this correctly or it's coincidental. I'm tempted just to have the belts replaced and see if that takes care of the problem and run if this dealer wants to do balancer work.

One other question - if I'm wrong and it is the balancer - am I doing any damage by continuing to drive it?

Thanks in advance for any advice

 

Have you tried replacing the idler and tensioner pulleys? thats where mine was. I replaced the AC idler and tensioner while i was at it

 

the belts are five years old. They need to be replaced no matter if they are the problem....so change them and see.

 

I would say if you can spray the belt and the sound goes away, then it is almost certainly the belts. If it was the bearings in the tensioner, spraying the belts would not change the noise.

I would probably replace just the belts first and see if the chirp went away. If it was still there, then I might replace the tensioner(s).

By the way, I would never spray WD-40 on a rubber belt. If I sprayed anything to test the belt, I would just mist a little water on the belt.
Even GM warns that spraying any kind of belt dressing on a serpentine type belt can cause belt deterioration.

 

with 50k i would change the belts and idler just because. i would then listen to the balancer with a stethescope just to be sure. if you have a bad balancer you should feel vibration when you rev the motor, this will in time cause damage to your motor as well.

 

there's a thread that says goodyear belts works great to prevent belts squeeks

 

yep...while you are at it..probably a good time to replace hoses