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This started last week, initially I just put it down to a bit of belt squeel, but now it has developed into a harsh almost metallic random 'chiruping'. Oddly it's only at tickover/very low revs. Air con & winding the steering make no difference.
Last night I ran it with the belt off and it was fine, so not the water pump or cambelt tensioner thankfully.
All pulleys spun freely and smoothly by hand but when I put the belt back the noise was back and it is unaffected by belt tension. I even tried spraying the belt with silicon, no difference.
I'm guessing it's a bearing but in what?? How do you track it down?

Err, crankshaft pulley failure imminent Seriously dude, stop driving it until you fix or eliminate it, they usually take out the cam belt too when they go.

Spraying stuff on aux belts makes them worse,
wd40 and silicone based lubes are to be avoided , it just softens the belt,

once there soaked in it, they will chirp even more,

My HDi90 was doing this since I had it. The crank pully was obviously gone you could see i moving. I just kept spraying the pully with WD40

I hadn't really considered the crank pulley as the noise seems to eminate more from the top of the motor.
I might try pushing some some superglue down the side of the rubber on the pulley. If it shut's it up even for a few seconds I then know which bit is broke. Or the WD40 trick, silicon spray, furniture polish, olive oil, lard.

How can a crank pulley failure cause the cambelt to go?

if the aux belt goes,
it can take out the timing belt, but iguess what isay is to be taken with a pinch of salt,
its your car break it if you want

Well, 52 quid later and I have eliminated the crank pulley.
I am fairly sure now that it's the alternator bearing, because,
when I stick a bit of rubber hose in my earole and poke it around, everything sounds like you would expect except the pulley end of the alternator which sounds like a bag of bolts AND a bit of accurate WD squirting into the alt. bearing stops the chirping for a couple of minutes.

Anyone want a perfectly good 2nd hand crank pulley?

Wow, alternator £140 plus VAT. There are some on Ebay for £120.

Has anyone tried to strip and replace bearings in one of these?

I saw the bloke from wheeler dealers do it and it looked remarkably easy.
When I say easy he did have a fully equipped garage and various monkeys off camera to do the actual work for him.
Might be worth a google, alternators are all basically the same and there could be a few how to's on you tube.

As a short term/low cost fix I thought I'd try a internet breakers alternator.
Well, it's just turned up & one of the screw terminals is busted off.
Does anyone know what the very thin wire to the alternator does? Will it work without?

Mine doesn't have any form of push on plug, just the 2 stud terminals, or 1 in this case!

To be fair to the breaker in question he has offered me another one for next week, but the car sounds so bad now I'm not sure it will last till then.

Think I've found the culprit:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PEUGEOT-306-3 ... 0549622282
Got on ordered, anyone got any tricks on how to change it without a special tool?

piglet wrote:Think I've found the culprit:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PEUGEOT-306-3 ... 0549622282
Got on ordered, anyone got any tricks on how to change it without a special tool?

Did this cure it,i'm interested to know as mine sounds terrible too and its all pointing to the alternator at the minute.

Paul

I have the new fleabay pulley and have found a local auto electrician who says he has the tools, just waiting for him to fit it in.
In the mean time the car is running sweet & quite on the breaker alternator.
What is curious is that the new pulley locks in one direction and 'freewheels' the other way, but the pulley on the breaker alternator appears locked in both directions.
My old pulley is clearly knackered and I'm a bit cross with myself that I didn't notice it when examining all the pulleys in the car with the belt off, that cost me 50 quid for an unecassary crank pulley change.

Hope all that helps, try putting the little red tube in your WD40 can and squirting into the back of the alternator pulley with it running, if it changes the noise then that must be the cause.