Engine squealing???

[mustangsally69]

Not sure what is going on with my truck. Engine started squealing this morning when I left for work, thought it was just the cold, first I have driven it in cold weather, just got it this summer. I thought the noise was coming from the power steering pump, but tonight I listened again and sounds like it's coming from back near the distributor. Could be just the way it sounded but not sure if it is the belt or not. Doesn't matter if clutch is in or out, idling or going down the road, not constant either, comes and goes. I listened under the truck also but sounds like coming from top of engine. 3.0, manual tranny...155,000 miles but still a good truck. 12 inch total lift, 37" Super Swampers. Not that it matters, just in case someone wants to buy it, getting too cold to work on it, lol!

 

[GatorBlue92]

not sure if your year truck has one but it sounds like the cam synchro is on the way out

 

[mustangsally69]

Thanks!!

Read a lot of others having similar problems, no surprise there. Thank you for the quick response though!

 

[Big Jim M]

When it is squealing take the belt off and start her up again to see if it squeals.. If not then replace the idler bearings on the belt system. They are cheap and have rollerskate bearings in them. By far the most common squeals from modern engines.
Big Jim

 

[betomonroy]

I strongly sugest You follow Gator's intuition. Serious damage can occur if the syncro's bushing lets go and You don't do nothing in time.

 

[Southern3.0]

Its a '93 so it has a distributor instead of a cam syncro. My old '91 Ranger with the 3.0 had what I thought was belt squeak or chirp, turns out the bushings in the distributor where worn out, and if I pushed on the dizzy when it was squeaking the noise would go away. I sold the truck before I fixed it, I did changed the distributor on a '96 Bronco that had the same issue, a new dizzy fixed it right up.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

the cause of the cam syncro failures on newer ('95+) trucks is the bushing that the syncronizer shaft rides on. while older trucks use a distributor, they still have the same shaft and bushing as the newer trucks. fortunatly for us dizzy guys, if the bushing gets too wobbly, the dizzy rotor will fail to transmit the coils power to the plugs and thus the truck will stop running instead of the oil pump stopping and seizing the motor up.

id plop a whole new distributor in there and be done with it.