This morning I woke up to 21 degrees here in Iowa City, and one of my belts started screeching loudly for a few minutes before it warmed up. I took my car into a local mechanic, and he said that he could not find anything wrong with it (I have a 97 J30, 51,000 miles). He thought that the belts were "pretty tight" and there were no cracks in them. He suggested I should put some belt dressing on them for now.

When I started to put some belt dressing on one of the belts (the top one on the passenger side of the car), I can hear a little screeching noise, which stopped as soon as the dressing were sprayed on, but came right back in a few seconds. The belt seems pretty tight already, but I can see the central nut and was wondering whether tightening the belt is a simple turn clockwise or counter-clockwise? Can an overtighened belt screech as well? In the middle of the nut seems like another nut of some kind, with just a hole/dimple in the middle. I didn't want to mess with it for now without consulting one of the gurus here on the forum.

One more thing. The mechanic accidentally pulled one of the hoses off when he was checking the belts, I believed. It's a small little hose in the same area connected to the main, larger air hose. There's a picture of the hose I'm asking about in the J30's manual on page 7-7 (left picture--with the small hose located above the word PULL). I was just wondering what significance this hose has, and whether it had harmed my engine in any way. I just discovered it a few hours after I left the mechanic. Thanks again, everyone.

I'll try to take a picture of it and post it here tonight. Take care.

dont have my manual here with me right now, but i know of 2 such hoses. A larger one (maybe about 3/8") is on the right side of the intake piping (when viewing the engine bay from in front of the car). I believe this hose puts warm air into the intake tract when the engine is below normal operating temp. I vaguely remember a smaller hose on the left side which is vacuum hose sized, it is probably used to send a baseline pressure to some part of the vaccum system. how long was the hose off? i would say that damage is unlikely if you caught it quickly, but any opening in the intake tract downstream of the air filter can let in a suprisingly large amount of debris and dust (bad for engine internals, especially sand) IF anything happened, and the check engine light stayed off, it will likely be a long time before you ever see the effects of what might have entered the engine through the leak. Cant hurt to change your oil now to make sure you get any fine particulates out that might have made it into your oil.

if forgot about the belts. If its a louder screeching rubber sound, or is accompanied by burnt rubber smell, it is tightened wrong. The manual gives what each belt should displace under a certain load in the maintainance section. Tightening and loosening belts, if i remember correctly, involves loosening a lock bolt first. a second bolt is used for the actual adjustment. are the belts worn laterally or do they have frayed edges? this may indicate the belt was slipping side to side before, and now that some of the edges are eaten away, it has more room to oscillate and thus the squealing begins.

ahh yes, the power steering belt squeel. unfortunately this is probably the hardest one to adjust and is more then likely always the one squeeling on this motor. the belt deflection should be no more then the 1/4"-1/2" area. it should be just a tad looser then the other two which should no more then a 1/4" deflection.To tighten I find it easier to go through the bottom. There are 3 bolts you need to mess with. 2 are on the tensioner and both are 12mm I believe. The 3rd is the real pain. It's a 14mm and it's directly behind the p/s pulley. You'll see a hole in the pulley that you can access the bolt through...BUT it has to be lined up correctly. Either you can crank the engine by hand until it's lined up or you turn the bolt a quarter at a time by going through the bottom with a wrench..this will take a while. If you're lucky you might be able to take off the belt and just turn the p/s pulley by hand until it lines up..but that usually isn't the case.Once you get the bolt loosened up and the two tensioner bolts loosened up you can begin retensioning. Tighten the long tensioner bolt down till the appropriate deflection is achieved then tighten the lock down nut(is that what it's called??) then tighten the big 14mm accessory bolt back up.I'm currently doing this now, but I have to go by a new belt for the p/s as the one i got is to big and i can't tension it anymore.

The little hose you're talking about(i think it's the one you're talking about) connects to the bottom side of the intake piping right before the throttle body. If it's a rubber hose with a little metal piece in the end of it, that's the one. I don't have the manual with me but I think it's part of the exhaust gas recovery system.

Thanks to the both of you. As always Mayhem_J30, you come through for me. Yes, the little hose I'm talking about is exactly the one you've described. Do you think it did any damage while it was off (3-5 hours or so)? How come I didn't notice any engine performance issues when it was off? Would it account for the smell of gas in the exhaust?

Is it possible for the belt in quesion to be too tightened, and thus squeaking? I didn't know that there are three different bolts involved. I can only see the one in the center of the pulley. Thanks again guys.

And I forgot to add in my original post that the screeching sound this morning went away as soon as I took my foot off the gas pedal. Would the power steering belt be affected by the gas pedal?

alexhho wrote:Thanks to the both of you. As always Mayhem_J30, you come through for me. Yes, the little hose I'm talking about is exactly the one you've described. Do you think it did any damage while it was off (3-5 hours or so)? How come I didn't notice any engine performance issues when it was off?

Is it possible for the belt in quesion to be too tightened, and thus squeaking? I didn't know that there are three different bolts involved. I can only see the one in the center of the pulley. Thanks again guys.

And I forgot to add in my original post that the screeching sound this morning went away as soon as I took my foot off the gas pedal. Would the power steering belt be affected by the gas pedal?

what does the manual say that hose is? it's probably something small that you'll never notice in performance and for that short amount of time i doubt any adverse affects took place.i haven't heard of belts making noise from being too tight but it could put extra tension on bearings and prematurely wear out the pulleys.Like I said in the other reply, you can probably only see the tensioner bolts from the bottom of the engine. Looking from the top all you can see is the pulley, belt and the big 14mm bolt.

the p/s steering belt and the other accessory belts would be directly affected by engine speed because they are attached to the crank shaft pulley. so when you press the accelerator your creating more force then that belt has friction to hold therefore sliding and squeeling occur.I'm attaching some pictures of the p/s pump that i grabbed from twinturbo.net The bolt marked in red is the lock down bolt. Directly to the left of it(not shown in pic) is the bolt that actually tightens. The red bolt is attached to the tensioner to lock. So they are perpendicular to each other.

big bolt!

Here's the picture with the hose above the belt with the bolt. Both are the ones I have been talking about.

Here's the picture with the bolt. I don't know if you guys can see it, but there seems to be an orange bolt inside it. Thanks Mayhem_J30. I just saw your pictures as I'm putting these up.

Would that little hose being disconnected contribute to the gas smell in the exhaust?