Been having a issue with belt tensioner making racket during idle/ acceleration from a off idle and idle with ac on. It is 100% proven to be caused by it traveling too far and hitting its limit of travel ( hitting like a internal hard stop) during acceleration or load at a certain rpm speed...so has to be a belt issue..right? I have replaced tensioner with a new one and issue is still there and belt is new also but is a aftermarket belt.

I have checked all the pulleys by hand and they feel good and noise is not there when ran without belt. Belt is not squealing and have marked tensioner in 3 places without belt, with belt installed and end of travel and tensioner moves from about half way to end of travel during acceleration or slight load idling with ac on and that is when it occurs.

Someone mentioned to me that althought I have tried 2 new belts to try and get a oem or a oe belt for this car and see what happens as some aftermarket belts are sized a little longer to make it useful for more applications.

So anyone here knows what the OEM or I guess OE belt is? I looked at some GM OEM part stores found using google and dang the cheapest one is 60 dollars shipped and none shows a actual name or part number to use to cross reference with. I have seen a dayco advertise their belt for this car as Exceeds OE Specifications and is listed as .5" shorter than the Gatorback belt for this car. The Dayco is only one I saw listed as exceeds OE so I'm about to buy it unless some one knows for sure ...thanks!

 

I can say that I have replaced a lot of belts in my days, many on cars just like yours, and have never had a problem with a dayco of Ploy-cog belt, never tried the Gatorback brand myself.

 

Thanks for the reply, After doing trial and error on belt sizes found out the dayco one is the actual lenth that the OEM belt was and the other 3 aftermarket ones I have are actually .5" longer. As oem is 83.5" and the aftermarket belts are 84"

Do not know why the other times I had changed belts out never had this problem guess just got lucky and had gotten a dayco belt.

 

I assume, just as you do, that they make the belt longer to make it fit more models. I have never ran into the issue myself but the most available belts around here are Dayco,Ploy-cog and Goodyear. I have also used Federated belts from Fishers/Sheppards auto parts with no issues. Another option may have been finding a larger pulley for the tensioner, if the longer belts are all you could find. Glad to hear you got it fixed up.