Last winter my wife's truck started squeaking a little bit when it was cold out. I checked the pulley alignments and they seemed to be ok so I changed the bearings (two in the tensioner and one idler pulley). The noise went away so I figured that was that....

This year the squeak came back in a big way. Much louder than last year. I figured the bearings were going bad but upon further inspection the pulleys were way out of alignment. The first photo shows the conditions of her truck (Theo) when I popped the hood. The second photo shows what our F-450 (Simon) looks like for comparison's sake. The third photo shows what Theo looked like after I replaced the tensioner. I had to get a Gates unit from NAPA since it was the weekend. It was built differently but fit ok. The smooth pulley extended out a little further than the OEM tensioner but that didn't affect anything since that pulley doesn't have tracks anyway.

As a bonus for the curious set...
The last two photos show (left to right) the tensioner removed from my '99 (Alvin) a few years ago next to the tensioner just removed from Theo and then the NAPA part on the far right.


P.S. Apologies for the photo quality...my daughter was helping to take pics with my cell phone while holding the straight edge...

 

Man, you did it all wrong. You are supposed to post up and ask for help. Then you are supposed to say that you haven't turned a wrench in forever and leave us hanging as to wether you got your belt taken care of or not. LOL. Great job.

 

Guilty