So here I am 500 miles away from home, on a Saturday night when my truck starts making this noise...
Since this video is taking forever to upload, I'm just gonna describe it and post the video later.
At idle once the truck is warmed up, it makes this rhythmic squeak/chirp noise. It doesn't seem to do it when the engine is cold, and it doesn't do it constantly either. It will come and go but when it is present it maintains a constant rhythm. When the revs go up a bit it disappears.
The good news is that as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to be coming from the bottom of the engine. The oil on the dipstick looks nice and golden, and coolant level is fine. I can't trust my oil pressure gauge because I borked it, but it isn't low and my oil light isn't on. The noise seems to be much louder when listened to from the top of the engine than when I lean down and put my head near the bumper.
So ordinarily I would attribute it to the belt, but...
The belt is maybe a year and a half old and it is a gatorback. The belt tensioner is maybe a year old and is AC Delco. Alternator is less than a year old and is an AC Delco reman unit. Air conditioner is two years old and was bought brand new, not remanufactured. Thus I don't get why it's making this noise. There IS an idler pulley that hasn't yet been replaced so maybe that's it, I dunno. The tensioner arm twitches some (not sure how much is normal) but I can't see the idler pulley moving around but I don't guess that means anything.
Sucks to be down here so far from home without any tools and this crap comes up.
Other than that *dang* noise which so far seems to be more annoying and embarrasing than anything else it's running just fine. No loss of power or anything and the voltage is reading a nice 13.8 or so volts most of the time (at least when the chirping is going on).
After typing that long ass post, the upload is still only at 23% so I'll go ahead and send this off and reply with the video later. Any ideas you have would be great, as long as letting me know whether or not this truck is safe for the 500 mile trip back as well as some more driving around here tomorrow, maybe 750 miles tops total trip and all.
.
.
.