Been doing a search on serpentine drive belt squeal and have not been able to come up with any exact comparisons to the squeal my '99 Lightning has.

I get it in morning after the truck sits outside about 11-12 hours overnight. Squeal begins at start-up and lasts for two or more minutes. The belt looks fine. It has no cracks and is not frayed or particularly worn looking.

The weird part is that the squeal seems to come from the upper right pulley wheel which has the only function of routing the belt. I discovered that if I spray water on the outside of the belt the squeal diminishes and quickly stops. It stopped one time when I spat on it.

I am reluctant to take the truck into the dealer to replace the drive belt on a truck with only 16500 miles. Any ideas out there as to fixing the problem?

Now I can only imagine some of the possible responses.

 

There was a problem with the tensioner that is documented here. Not sure if this is your issue or not
Try searching on tensioner
Doug

 

Your right about that pulley making noises. Mine used to do it on my 99 also. It would do it after a warm up though, made a loud squealing noise that would just get me so mad. It wouldn't make the squeal when the truck was in park though only in drive.

I used to grease the pulley once in a while and that would seem to fix it for a while. About 3 thousand miles.

I recently removed that entire pulley system from my tuck and install a custom made belt tensionoir so It doesn't squeal anymore. While that wasn't what I did the mod for, it did solve that problem also.

 

my 01 is starting to do the same thing with only 3k miles. Wht's the poop?

 

DR.D thats a cool picture. Looks good. Thats one of the shinest L's i've seen.

 

My L did almost the same thing except it was the S/C belt tensioner. It was worse if I let the truck set out overnight. I was embarrassed to start it up if friends were around. With the bracket going across and attatching to everything it was hard to tell where the noise was coming from so I took a 5.00 stethoscope and checked things out and ended up changing the belt tensioner. Everything has been fine since. Good Luck

 

Ford has updated belts made from a different material, to stop that belt noise. I'd get two new belts on there, and you should have no more noise.

 

I had a squealing problem with my old S-10, and it was a serpentine belt system and I was told that a bar of soap will eliminate this problem.

Use some tongs and grab the soap horizontally and when the truck is idle move the soap in a back and forth motion and it should take care of the belt squeal.

 

redlite:

My 01 L with 1800 miles on it has done the "squeal" twice...
both times at WOT from a 20 mph role.....I suspect the belt tensioner also....BTW....truck was fully warmed up when this has happened....good luck with your L.