Hello all, New to this forum. There's a wealth of information here, but can't seem to find a definitive answer on this one. Had to have head gaskets replaced about a year ago on my 99 Ranger 3.0 Flex Fuel. I had them replace the belt at the time because it had a squeak and also replaced the water pump since the motor was down that far. When I got the car back the thing still made a noise that got worse. I replaced both the tensioner and idler and still had noise intermittently, especially when it was wet. Recently the noise started getting worse and I noticed that the a/c pulley and the power steering pulley were about 1/8 out of alignment and of course they are only 3" apart, so it puts a pretty good pressure on the belt and the belt was actually starting to ride up on the back of the a/c pulley. I tried to find an adjustment, but couldn't. So this past week, the thing really started squalling and the a/c would intermittently quit working (especially when really hot outside, when you need the a/c the most). I found that the belt was wearing badly. In tearing into things, I found the bearing on the a/c pulley was bad (the pulley just wobbled around). I replaced the clutch today and hoping that the bad bearing was probably the problem with the alignment. But the new clutch and pulley are still out of alignment with the ps pulley. So now I'm afraid that the alignment problem was the root cause of the bearing failure and I'm sure it caused the belt wear. I've read in a couple of other places that I can just pull the ps pulley out a bit on the shaft to line things up, but when I brought that up at the parts store, they said that trying to pull the pulley out would loosen it up and it is just press fit. Any suggestions on how I can get the pulleys back into alignment?

 

Maybe someone else can help here, but I thought the p/s pulley was a force fit installed with a tool that grabs the outside of the pulley and the shaft at the hub and forces them together until they align. I think if the p/s pulley needs to move rearward to align with the rest of the front end accessory drive, that is how you fit it. Anyone else installed or removed p/s pulley recently?