Questions and Answers
Squealing Honda
Q. Hello and thanks for the service you provide! I have a '93 Honda Civic DX with a four cylinder engine. The car has about 70,000 miles on it. My car has P/S, A/C, ABS and automatic transmission.
I am the original owner of the car and have been fairly good about oil changes and taking the car in for check-ups. For the past several months, I've noticed an intermittent squeaking sound coming from underneath the car. The sound also seems to originate from the center or rear of the car. It squeaks most frequently when I'm going about 60 mph or when I am accelerating (particularly when trying to get up to speed to merge onto the highway). It doesn't seem to squeak when I'm braking. The noise is loud enough to hear while driving on the highway with the windows rolled up. Since it's intermittent (I may go weeks without hearing it) it's been difficult for mechanics to catch the problem. To be fair, I only recently noticed that the noise was happening during accelerating--before then, there didn't appear to be a pattern to it.
The other day, my husband was driving the car, trying to merge onto the expressway. He pretty much floored it and instead of the usual squeak, the noise I heard was a loud, drawn out squeal. I don't think it stopped until he took his foot off of the accelerator. Why might my car be making these sounds? Is there anything in particular I should ask the mechanic to check when I take it in? Any help/advice you can give would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much.
A. It sounds to me like you have a loose fan belt, probably an alternator or power steering belt. Loose belts will make the noise you describe and get loudest on hard acceleration. What you can do to confirm this is spray the belts with silicone spray or a belt dressing and then drive the car. If the noise goes away, then you know for sure it's the belts. If it doesn't, then I would recommend taking it in and having it looked at. There may be something rubbing a pully or a drive shaft.
