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It's normal for the factory harmonic balancer to fail which is a huge burden to change . Hopefully it's just a tensioner pulley or worn belt. Look for the main drive pulley to wobble while it's running . Any bit of wobbling or play is too much and requires a swap
Rob I agree with Lexybird. Put a straight edge across the pulleys until you find out which one is out of line or "sagging". The tensioners do go bad and droop out of alignment. If you have had any of the belt driven components swapped out make sure the replacements have been installed with the proper alignment. The straight edge mentioned above will help you determine that. The harmonic balancer can also move out of alignment because it has no key way and is on the drive shaft with just a friction fit. If all the pulleys are aligned you might just have old belts. Check them out for cracks on the "bottom" side.
I didn't mention that I rebuilt the engine 700 miles ago and replaced all the accessories except for the tensioner. the belt didn't feel super tight. It doesn't slip during normal driving. only hard acceleration.
I will check the pulley alignment in the morning. The power steering pulley may be a little off.
You might want to upgrade your P/S pulley to the Z06 version before you put your car back together.
It won't help the belt squeal problem any - but you'll be saving yourself tons of headaches down the road if you ever need to replace your P/S pump or remove the accessory drive bracket later!
Belt squeals really suck on c5's...there are multiple possible causes. Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. Since you just rebuilt your engine, I wonder if you are above stock power? If so, the accessory belt may just not be able to handle a quickly floored pedal. ATI actually sells a kit to convert the C5's accessory belt from 6 to 10 "grooves" as the stock belts are a bit undersized to begin with.
2. This could be a sign your AC Compressor is failing and leaking fluid onto the belt although this issue usually occurs at idle not at revs.
2020 Corvette of the Year Finalist (performance mods)
C5 of Year Winner (performance mods) 2019
there is really no point in upgrading to a 10 rib (or even 8 rib for that matter) on an n/a engine... it will give you better belt traction no doubt, but that most likely isn't the op's issue not to mention it would cost a substantial amount more to replace all the other pulleys to accommodate that larger belt... I suspect the pulleys are not perfectly aligned or a tensioner that is starting to age... have you looked at the tensioner to see where the marks are lined up?
We had a thunder storm today so I didn't get around to checking it out. I'm leaning toward thinking it is alignment or tensioner since all the other parts are new.
Belt squeels.
