So I have had a chirping engine for a while, and did some **** poor troubleshooting. I would have saved a lot of time if I had jumped into it and really tried to see what was wrong. The problem is, I had no idea how to and slowly aggregated advise over time. You can look at my started threads to see how many times I half-assed really finding the problem. But no more, and you can too....

This is what it sounded like:RX350 Chirp - YouTube

Which one of the 8 pulleys you say? I asked the same thing. Some people suggested mechanics stethoscope. I got one. Did not help me. Even when I found the pulley that was the problem, it did not help.

What I did, YMMV.

The top is a mess, cannot see anything from up here, gotta get at it from below:


- Jack the passenger side of the car up.
- Remove your wheel
- Remove this piece with 10mm socket


- Loosen belt tensioner
Some people leave a hex-head in there. It was too tight for me to do that so I just fought with it each time.
If you have a long 14mm wrench you might be able to manage with just that. I don't. I used my 1/2 socket wrench to act as an extension (put the square thingy inside the 14mm cresent thingy and apply pressure). Then I rotate to relieve pressure. Because I use a ratcheting wrench as my extension, I am able to adjust the angle of it to help work around all the other stuff insdie the area. Sorry no pics. This takes all 3 hands I have...no spares.

- Belt tensioner is top pulley:


Remove serpentine belt when tensioner is loose.

Spin all the pulleys, mess with them, see if one has play. For me, it was super obvious. It was the AC magnetic clutch. That too is in the picture above as the bottom pulley.

Once you figure out which pulley it is, see if you can buy new bearings. For the AC clutch, they are 17.99 at Autozone. Found a guy in the area who would press out the old one and press in the new one for 10....way better than $500 for new clutch. If that does not work, get a new pulley.



To remove the AC clutch you need to remove a 10mm bolt and a snapring. You will 1/4 drive socket wrench, 10mm socket, strap wrench, and snap ring pliers.
Again, bottom pulley in the above picture

Strap wrench:


Remove this piece by wrapping it with a strap wrench and breaking the bolt loose with the socket wrench. From there, hold the socket wrench in place and just spin it to loosen it. I would tell you a direction, but I forgot it by now and it is a 50/50 shot for you. Hint: If it gets tight you are going th wrong way.



It was in there snug, so I used this to loosen it a little at a time...spin, pry, spin, pry..etc.:http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-55-117...s=nail+pry+bar

The snap ring. On a scale of 1 to baby punching, this was like a 9. The two little holes to pry into were not visible. I had to take pictures of it with my phone to figure out where they were. Took me 2 hours. Once I got them in and could apply pressure, it was pretty easy.


After the snap ring was out, the magnetic clutch came out with no issue.


The bearings spun like a champ, so it was acutally just loose from time. I reinstalled (reverse the above) and made sure everything was super tight. No more chirp.


Things from this which seem universal:

- Physically check the pulleys by removing the belt to see if any of them wobble/move in a way they should not.
- Go at the problem from below with a jack and jack stands.
- Get a use a strap wrench.
- Take pictures to help out others.

2007 RX350 FWD 118k Miles

 

Outstanding photographs. Aside from professional cropping, yours are equal to or better than most of the ones in Chilton manuals.

And congrats on the successful diagnosis/repair!

 

Very good post and great pics. Thanks for taking the time to document your repair!