Squealing noise from cambelt area

[Dean250]

Hello fellow members not been on here in a while due to a house move and finishing part time studies therefore I've not had much time for my hobbies. I still have both my Williams's but the W2 I began restoring hasn't been touched for around a year.

Anyway....

I started my mint W3 up earlier for the first time in 4 months and I noticed a squeal/noise from the cambelt area sounded quite bad, about a year ago I heard something similar but it seemed to go almost after a minute of running today the noise stayed until the engine was fully warmed up and it changed with revving.

The car is on 64k and the cambelt is due around now but the car has only covered around 2k since it was last done and has lived in a garage ever since (I know this doesn't mean it should last longer in anyway), its my intention to get it done this summer replacing bearings and water pump but I'm just wondering what the noise could be? bearing maybe?

Thanks for any help!

Dean

[ianbirch]

Hopefully nothing to do with the cam belt... more likely to be alternator belt related or possibly alternator bearing.

Regards Ian

[16v_paddy]

Could also be the power steering pump.

Take the alternator belt off & start the car, you'll soon know if it's the cambelt at fault or not

[Dean250]

Thanks guys, how difficult is it to remove the alternator belt in situ? need to get chance to take a better look, I just started the car to run it up to temp for the first time in months

[dimma]

Could also be a worn or seized cam belt tensioner.

[16v_paddy]

Thanks guys, how difficult is it to remove the alternator belt in situ? need to get chance to take a better look, I just started the car to run it up to temp for the first time in months

Find the tensioner which is no.36 in this pic



The tricky part is undoing the 7mm allen key bolt as you need a trimmed down allen key or 1 of those little hex bits you get in halfords socket sets and this needs to be done 1st



Or you could cut the belt but you'd still have to do the tensioner thing to fit a new 1