Hey guys,

I was working on my wife's car, Mazda 3, the other day. She needed a new belt tensioner, so I replaced it. I kept the old one and had an idea. I've been dealing with squealy water pump issues since I got rid of the air pump system. I do have the dual belt alternator pulley, but I am very confident that isn't where most of the squealing comes from. There is more than plenty pulley surface area covered on the dual alternator pulley, while the water pump has just a small amount of contact from both belts on one side. What I was thinking was that I could modify this belt tensioner to take a v-belt pulley and use it to keep the water pump from squealing. I'd position it by making a bracket and attaching it to the water pump where the air pump bracket would go. Here are some pictures of the disassembled tensioner and where I am thinking of putting it. If the main arm of the tensioner was mirrored the other way, it would work a whole lot better. The only problem I would have with orientation is trying to make it pull into slack with rotation rather than pull into more tension with rotation (trying to figure out how I would word this). I wouldn't want it to stretch tighter under high rpm and bust something.

Let me know what you think


Tensioner wheel would need to be replaced with a v-belt pulley

About here is where I would put it

 

I was thinking of doing something similar in the same position with the cosmo pullies I'm using(only one 5 rib belt)...I was just thinking of adding an idler pulley in a fixed position to get some more contact on the wp pulley. Nothing that adds tension. Tension would be adjusted with the alternator. Would need to be a fairly small idler to work in that position.