my engine has a whiny sound to it. I have replaced the alternator because it was bad not cause of the noise. The belt is maybe two years old. I haven't seen any cracking in it. I was thinking about removing the hood insulation to help the engine breathe a little cooler but with this whiny noise i am reluctant to remove it. Any ideas or suggestions? thanks in advance

 

Maybe you could buy one of these mechanic's stethoscopes and poke it around on your engine/accesories to see where it is coming from.

 

A length of heater hose can serve the same function. I have a 2' length of 5/8" hose for just this purpose. Probe around, try to pinpoint the origin.

Other than that, for lack of details, any guessing right now is a shot in the dark at best. It could be a bad water pump, could be lots of things. When does the noise happen, does it (the pitch) change with engine RPM at all? Vehicle speed? Anything?

 

It gets higher pitched with higher rpm's. A kid thought that i had a supercharger on my car. I had to pop the hood in order to convince him otherwise. I geuss thats kinda cool but i'm sick of the noise. When i rev the engine i wanna be able to hear the exhaust, not that whining. I'll try probing around and see what i find out.

 

My guess would be the power steering pump.

It could also be the tensioner idler pulley bearings going...

The hose idea should narrow it down.

My bet is the PS.

 

thanks for the help, i'll be sure to look there. That does make sense cause it is coming from that side of the car. What needs to be replaced? the whole pump?

 

First make sure that it is not low on fluid.

If it is not, then yes the pump needs to be replaced.

You would need a power steering puller (you can rent them for free from autozone) and there are three torx bolts that hold it to the bracket.

You can replace just the pump if you want, however for $14 more you can get the whole thing including the resivour that surronds it.

here is a pic of just the pump part

 

do the bleeding procedure before replacing the pump, just because it whines dosen't mean it's bad, it most probably just has air in the system that needs to be blead out, in all the time I've been working on cars I've never seen the bump go funtanally bad, just leak

 

How do i bleed the pump?

 

take the belt completely off all the accessories and run the engine (not too long, it will overheat without the water pump spinning. 30 seconds max). If the noise is gone then its one of the accessories. give them all a spin by hand to see if they sound funny. its normal for the ps pump to make "clicking" noises when you turn it by hand and change directions so keep that in mind. dont forget to check out the idler and tensioner too.

 

to bleed the pump U have to jack the front of the car upand run the steering back and forth lock to lock, than start the car while it's jacked up and run it back and forth again, keep checking the fluid while your doing this and keep repeting it until it dosen't suck any more fluid down

 

Are you sure it's not the alternator? They will make a supercharger type noise if a diode goes bad (very common) and it will still work but not as well, unhook the plug in connection on the back of the alternator and start it back up and see if the noise goes away.

 

in the origanal post he said he R2'd the alternator, and that it wasen't the prob