I have a howling noise coming from my engine that I can't localize. It occurs most at startup and at idle. It goes away once the RPMs get over ~900-1000. I can't localize where it is coming from exactly but it sounds like the front of the engine. I just replaced the belt about a month ago. I'm gonna try swapping belts again but since it is new it seems less likely. I did have a problem with a bad heater valve and spilled a lot of coolant on the belt about a week or two ago. So I guess it could have screwed the belt up. Anyway, my question is what could cause this noise other than the belt?

 

Turns out my Power steering fluid was low so I topped it off and bleed the pump but noise is still there. I am worried that my pump might be damaged because of the low fluid and that it is still making noise.

 

could be a vaccum leak, or hell, even the fact that it's an open element could cause you to be hearing that, a lot of people mention that the engine sounds like it whistles when they switch to open element.

I'm not saying these are what it is, I'm just throwing out a few options in case you hadn't thought of them, and also pointing out that you may want to check the easy problems before the hard.

 

Yeah I have been trying to figure it out still. Looks like its not the power steering. Also, I dont have an open element filter, just a K&N inside stock airbox. I didn't think of a vacuum line, I'll have to check the lines. I was thinking It might be the pulley for the A/C compressor cuz when I bought the car the a/c pulley had some fluid leaking out of it which has since stopped. I was thinking it might have been oil for the bearings in the pulley. I don't know how to get the pulley off though, so I probably wqill have to bring it somewhere to get fixed.