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Heli_av8tor

Heli_av8tor

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Joined
Mar 3, 2017
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Location
NW Illinois
As we traveled across Kansas headed for the Colorado mountains, I started to get an intermittent squeal from the engine area. I?ve  replaced all bearings on the belt driven accessories within the last 15,000 miles except the PS pump and alternator I suspected one of those to be the culprit.

Started the engine this morning to leave our 3 Star Walmart accommodations and the squealing was back. Getting underneath I could hear the PS was ok. I took the tension off of the belt and started reaching up to rotate the components. First was the tensioner pulley and found it definitely bad. I?d replaced this bearing as a precaution when I replaced the water pump last fall. So much for preventative maintenance!

An O?Reilly?s was right next to us and had the pulley.

Would not have been fun on the two-lane mountain highways. Maybe even disastrous. Lucky it didn?t go another 200 miles before failure.
 
)@#($&*#@! Ideler on my car went out last year.. Thankfully it was while I was having the motor replaced on the RV and the mechanic is a good one who thinks a lot like I do on many things.. I could not give Xtreme Auto in Townsend GA a higher recommendation than that.

Per the "Book" you have to replace the entire end of the engine.

He replaced the pully and bearing

Other thankful. on my car there are 3 belts. One is PS and A/C. One is ALternator. not sure what #3 is might be Water pump.
 
Yikes! We just left Estes Park, CO in the toad, not the motorhome. Not a lot of choices for parts and repair in those small mountains. We felt lucky to find a Big O tire shop let alone anything more complicated.
 
Wow! Glad you got it figured out before you got back on the road. That was a blessing! Enjoy your travels and stay safe!
 
Hi Tom, glad you got that fixed before you hit the mountains!  I?m in Cortez CO til first week of October then heading south through NM. If you and Teresa are nearby maybe we could get together.
 
Tom, glad you were able to resolve this without major incident.  However now I'm a bit concerned.  Is this a normal maintenance item?  I've replaced the belts on my old motorhome as a precautionary measure, but the subject of pulleys never came up.  In fact I've never heard of this as a maintenance item.  How many miles do you have on your Pace? 
 
Debra: That would be fun. We won?t get that far south this trip. Headed to Ouray, CO for a week of mountain Jeeping with friends.  Then to Oklahoma City an Army reunion. We are planning KOFA and Q in January. Hope to see you there.

Gary:  we have 63k on our coach. These pulleys have a sealed bearing so can?t be lubed. If the seals leak the lube goes away and the bearing fails. My experience is that they start making a squealing noise when first started that quiets down as the lube warms up. This is usually in our frigid wintertime. I?ve always had plenty of warning. Just don?t ignore the warning.

This bearing must have been defective or just inferior from the git go (with less than 15k miles).
 
I thought you all might be headed south for the winter ?. Ouray should be beautiful now with the aspens. Have a great trip. See you in January.
 
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