Aspire Engine Whine is Driving Me Crazy

[JohnGunn]

Not able to find a low mileage Festiva after over a year of looking in San Diego, I decided I would expand my options to include the Aspire. Within a few weeks I found one near Riverside, CA, about 100 miles from my home in Coronado. In good, clean, original condition, inside and out, with only 78,000 miles.

That was three weeks ago and I have put off posting a full report of the process until I finished making the improvements I felt it needed. Most of the things have been simple and satisfying. But there is a whine when the engine runs above a certain RPM that I find extremely annoying. I have no tach but it starts at the RPM achieved when the car is traveling 25 MPH in third gear and gets higher and louder from that RPM on up.

Now, this is the same engine I had in my 1990 Festiva and never in the 16 years that it served me did it make any such noise. Using a mechanic's stethoscope I listened to the alternator, the A/C compressor (air conditioner was not turned on for my tests), the idler pulley, and the pipe that connects directly to the water pump, called "Water Pump Inlet Connector." No sign of any whine was heard.

That leaves me to suspect the Timing Belt Tensioner. The timing belt was replaced 13,000 miles ago. The previous owner, who had the car for a year and a half, said she never noticed the whine and that neither of the two mechanics she took it to mentioned it.

My first thought was that the bearing in the tensioner could be failing, but that never happened in 183,000 miles with my Festiva. On the Internet there are lots of people who claim such a whine can be caused if the timing belt is tightened too much. But how could that happen? The spring attached to the tensioner, which comes with the car, sets the position of the tensioner. How could anyone screw that up?

There follows two YouTube links. The first one is a recording of the noise as heard from my driver's seat. The recording was made with a good digital camera, but with poor audio recording capabilities. Believe me the whine is really much louder than it appears in the video. The second link is the recording of an Aspire that doesn't make this whining noise. That's the way I want mine to sound. Can anyone help me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxtjlT3nAI4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdVwQMeU4yE

Be assured, your best efforts will be fully appreciated.

John Gunn
Coronado, CA

[eurotiva]

I've overtightened a timing belt on mine and it made a similar noise.

[jtugfestiva]

sounds like the timing belt might be hitting the cover it happened to me.

[JohnGunn]

sounds like the timing belt might be hitting the cover it happened to me.

I put my stethoscope on the timing belt cover and could hear a scraping sound, so I'm guessing one of the pulleys is touching a cover somewhere. But the sound I heard was much lower and would be lost in the other sounds the engine makes. Nevertheless, I'll definitely check the covers for signs of rubbing when I go into it to check the bearings and the tightness of the tensioner. And start looking for some good clean, straight covers on my junk yard forays.

Today, I plan to go to a local junk yard, that has an Aspire, to practice getting to the tensioner. I have to work along the street and can't afford to be caught in the middle of something to discover that I lack a part or tool to finish the job.

If I recall correctly, after removing only the top cover I will be able to loosen the tensioner bolt and allow the spring to apply the "correct" tension. Then rotate the engine two revolutions before tightening the bolt. After that I'll put things back together enough to test the effect on the running engine.

The timing belt was installed by a professional technician at a Goodyear service center, so I would expect he had access to the correct information needed to set the tension. If he did the right thing and the engine whistles, what could have gone wrong?

When I researched timing belts I often read about how they are especially designed to prevent stretching. If the belts made these days stretch less than the ones back in 1994, then the whole idea of allowing a spring, designed and constructed in the early 90's, to set the tension on a 2010 belt becomes questionable. If those old belts stretched they might start out whining before they stretched enough to find the correct, silent tension. If they don't stretch as much today, they might start out whining and never get to the point at which they are silent. In that event, I'm left having to either find an old-style, unimproved belt, or manually guessing at how much to adjust the spring-provided tension to stop the noise.

Examples of tining belt selling features:

AutoZone, Duralast/Dayco timing belt:
"Made with premium, high modulus glass fiber non-stretch cord that delivers precise length stability to keep the engine timed precisely and running smoothly over the life of the belt."

O'Reilly, Gates timing belt:
" High tensile strength cord construction minimizes stretch."

NAPA, POWER-FIT timing belt:
"High Tensile Strength Cord Construction Minimizes Stretch."

NAPA, NAPA timing belt:
"High tensile strength cord construction minimizes stretch."

Rock Auto, Goodyear Gatorback timing belt:
"Tensil Cord: Cord is dimensionally stable treated fiberglass, that resists shrinking and elongation. "

Bando timing belt:
"Tensile cord is engineered and treated for maximum load carrying capabilities - won't stretch."

eurotiva clearly knows what I'm talking about. Are he and I the only ones to have witnessed a new belt causing a B3 engine to whine?

John Gunn
Coronado, CA

[eurotiva]

I just leave it a little looser and it's quiet now.

[Nerd Racing]

just take the timing cover all the way off. we have anodized timing cam gears.

[iceracerdude]

You do know that once you let the spring pressure tighten the idler against the belt, you tighten that bolt back down to lock the idler. You can check it miles later if you feel it might strech and you can do a retighten. And that "gatorback" (cogged on the back)feature on that "brand" belt is the equivilent of a heat sink feature or those fins inside a disk brake. I think it's designed to be a cooling feature for fan belts, snowmobile, and motorcycle drive belts. I don't think thay make a timing belt like that, well at least not for our style idler pully, but I do use them for my alternator belts and sleds.

[JohnGunn]

After living with the whine since I bought my Aspire last August, I mentioned the noise in another thread, "Timing Belt Re-Alignment", and got some suggestions about what might be causing it and what I might do to identify the source.

A couple of members suggested that I remove the alternator belt and start the engine for a few seconds, to avoid overheating. When I did that, for the first time, I heard my engine run without whining. Never did the absence of a noise sound more beautiful.

As I see it, that belt does three things that could cause an unwelcome noise:

1. Turn the alternator.
2. Turn the water pump.
3. Exert pressure on the front bearing of the crankshaft.

My stethoscope tells me the noise is not coming from 1 or 2. That leaves 3. Which I intend to follow up in a thread called "Need Help Understanding Source of Engine Noise". You are all invited to subscribe to that thread to continue following the course of events.

[JohnGunn]

Solution: Replaced the Alternator and Whine No More.

As reported in my last message in this thread, the whine went away when I disconnected the alternator belt, but two things convinced me that the alternator was not at fault. First, my stethoscope showed no sign of noise similar to the offending whine and second, turning the pulley by hand showed no roughness and felt like a normal bearing still half full of grease.

Since there were several indications that the car had not been well maintained, I was left believing that the whine was coming from deeper inside the engine where the lubrication system had been compromised by sludge and restricted passages. I started a thread to address another engine noise which I still believe to be directly related to poor lubrication. I am currently engaged in a process to gradually clean the interior of the engine through the patient use of Seafoam. The link to that thread is found in my previous post.

Telling my brother about my car problems, I suggested he join our site and see if he could help me out. He listened to the recording in my other noise-related thread and said it sounded like the alternator. So, a little reluctantly, I promised him I'd check it again and I did. This time I didn't hear either the whine or the scrapping noise, but I could hear other sounds that made me suspicious enough to decided to replace it -- as much out of desperation as for any confidence it would turn out to be the cause.

Found a clean, original, smooth-turning alternator on a 96 Aspire in a local junk yard with only 126,000 miles on it.

Here is what it cost me:

Alternator: $17.95
Core: $6.00 (I plan to keep my old alternator and replace the bearing myself when this new one fails.)
Warranty: $4.49

Total cost: $28.00

I list the total price, to show that at this price it would have been wise for me to have just done this as soon as there was any sign that it could have even remotely been the cause, even though I was not 100% convinced that to be the case. It would have been worth much more than $28 to have been free of the noise over the last 10 or so months.

On the way home I stopped by AutoZone and found that it checked out OK. Even then I remained sceptical that it would make any difference. When I turned it by hand it felt exactly like the one on my car, smooth and apparently full of grease.

The replacement was made over a week ago, and there has been no whine since. I believe this has effectively solved my whine problem.

Whenever I make a mistake, as I did in this case, I try to turn it into a lesson for myself in future. It helps if I actually write it down, so, in the hope it will be of help to others, I'll state it here.

After analysis of a problem runs its course without producing any solution, you need new information to analyze. That can only come from making changes to the system and observing the effect those changes produce. In this case, after my analysis concluded that the problem must be either the alternator, the water pump, of some internal engine noise I mistakenly chose the latter to pursue. Had I taken the time to check on the price of a used alternator I might have bought one just on the chance that it would fix the problem or at the least affect the noise in some way that would suggest the problem was alternator related or prove that it wasn't.

This has been a long post, even for me, but I know that had I read something like it when I bought my car almost a year ago, my life would have been much improved through the absence of whine.

[mudder]

My alternator has been complaining for a long time, I just tell everyone it is the supercharger making all that noise and they believe me!