Volvo 940 - belt whistle/whine

[Ye Olde Banger]

Well, as per my in depth post on 17th Dec, this seems to be a real PITA issue.

I never did get round to saying that in the end I changed the belts & silence reigned......for a couple of months or so.
The old belts looked fine too, with no wear spots & further to my previous fiasco there is no reason anything should be misaligned as the brackets are all fine.

I've been sticking with the chirping but recently thought I might puff some French Chalk on them, but read somewhere on these posts someone did that with a stick of chalk which worked....but only for a short while, so I imagine that idea will only be temporary too.

I've got silicone grease & although it seems alien to me to grease a belt, being as Rolling Thunder has given it a bash with seeming success so far, that's just what I'm going to do now as it's a good car but this noise makes it sound, well, like a Ye Olde Banger.

I certainly wouldn't be tempted to try the belt dressing options, from what I read they offer only a temporary solution, then dry out making the original problem even worse, with the added bonus of leaving a nice gooey residue over the belts & pulleys so you can have hours of fun cleaning it all off again to inevitably fit new belts. Which seems to be the end result with that stuff.

I shall try & remember to do a follow up if successful over time.

[baggy798]

Exactly a month ago I cleaned the crank pulley grooves with a small wire toothbrush and then fitted two new Volvo belts, no noises so far.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by cjboddy

Well at least I don't have aircon issues to worry about ....I just open the window )

spraying some lube on the PAS pump pulley seemed to last a couple of days. the whine/whistle is back now. I imagine it could increase with speed but you can't hear when you are travelling faster.

Strange how oiling the pulley does sort it for a few days though ...... does this mean the PAS pump is the problem?

Cheers
Craig

The WD40 allowed the belt to slip a bit more so it didn't squeak/whine. The belt either needs tightening up (10k is a lot of miles without checking tension on a new belt) or as Alasdair suggests, some belt dressing which is essentially a goo you squirt on the belt to overcome wear in the pulleys and belt and improve traction.

Also if the noise disappears when you're traveling faster that's probably because you're in the straight ahead position with the steering so there's little or no load on the PAS belt - it only gets loaded up when the pump has to do some work by moving the rack from one side to the other following steering wheel input.