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hi everyone,

Starting this morning, my mx-5 started to make a strange high pitched squeeling sound, much like rubber being rubbed against and strained, or if you've ever raced go karts indoors, the sound the tyres make on the indoor surface.
The sound has been occuring at low revs/ idling speed and tends to come into play when the car has just started up, sitting at idle for a little while or shifting down to take corners say to from 3rd to 2nd.

Recently the car has had the drive belt changed, i also did a basic service on the mx this morning (spark plugs and oil)

The mx has no issues once over the idling revs and drives perfectly fine, no loss in power or anything as far, i'm at a loss of what it could be as it's just started to occur, it sounds like a loose fan belt or something similar, i'm not sure if it's the transmission, however, i'm not sure what that would sound like?

Regardless with a little throttle the sound dissipates, yet it's coming back with a vengeance whilst idling and tends to straining and whine

If you have an ideas of what i could check/ tighten or so forth, please feel free to contribute as it's really starting to annoy me!

Thanks Meta

sounds like the fan belt.
To make sure wait till it makes the noise then put a couple of drops of oil water wd40 or most other liquid on the belt and see if it goes away
Its usually instant. I usually just use a drop of oil of the end of the dip stick you don't need much.
Olboy

olboy wrote:sounds like the fan belt.
To make sure wait till it makes the noise then put a couple of drops of oil water wd40 or most other liquid on the belt and see if it goes away
Its usually instant. I usually just use a drop of oil of the end of the dip stick you don't need much.
Olboy

:\ Don't 5's run electric fans though?

(im not sure about the NAs, but with the NBs + I"m sure htey dont have fan belts.

But yeah, if you buy a product called belt grip and spray it inside your belts it will help them grip better stopping this noise.
The other option is to take it to a mechanic and get it tightened up, that'll work too.
When it happened to me it was my alternator belt (in my civic) - just used belt grip and it never came back ^.^

Another vote for "accessories" belt. Check and tighten the tensioning bolt, which is one that is sitting on an angle directly between the right-hand side fan and exhaust manifold.

+1 for above, alternator or the a/c+p/s belt.

+2 Probably the alternator belt unless you are starting the car with the A/C on.

If the belt is allowed to slip for to long then it will get glazed and no amount of tightening will stop the squealing. If that happens then the only solution is to get a new belt and tension it correctly.

When I was looking at belt grip products for another application it said on the pack that it wasn't suitable for multi-V type belt applications so I replaced the belt with a new one, problem solved.

I sometimes get a high pitch squeal from the passenger seat on spirited mountain drives, could this be related?

Meta, did you ever figure this out?

A couple of things that haven't been mentioned...

A squeaky belt can also be caused by a dying idler bearing, A/C compressor bearing, or other accessory on its way. When you replace the belt, test the operation of the idler and each accessory and make sure the bearings are in good shape.

If you replace the belt, and all the accessories are in good shape, and you STILL hear squealing, you may have an issue with the timing belt idler. I had this happen once, not on an MX5 but on a Nissan Exa I used to have (yeah I know, it sucked but I was young and poor at the time and the Exa was cheap).

Good luck!