Squeaky Belt! AHH!
 

In the past week my I started noticing an increasing squeak coming from under my hood. My dad and I had tried to figure out what it was. We got some belt dressing and sprayed it on it while it was running and the noise would dampen or stop, but only for a few seconds, then it would come back full force and even louder!

I read around just now and some people said not to use belt dressing (oops!). Any ideas what it could be? The belt was just replaced MAYBE 3,000 miles ago.

Tensioner?

take a long screwdriver and while the engine is running, carefully place it on the top of the alternator, tensioner, and water pump, that should narrow down your search for the squeal, but its likely the tensioner pully or the idler (i cant recall if we have idlers on the 4.0 or not, i think we do)

we had a ranger come in with the 3.0 squeeling like mad, turned out it was the tensioner, idler AND waterpump.... and the alternator pully had a very minor squeal but nothing to be concerned with, bad luck

Alright thanks!

try some sillicone spray, belt dressing usually makes mine worse

I had a bad squelinng sound, I bought a Goodyear Gatorback belt an solved the problem.

Yeah. I'm going to have my pulley's and pumps checked out, and if those are fine and it's the belt, I'm going to order a gatorback

Ended up just being the tensioner. They also found a coolant leak.

No more squeaky :)

coolant leak from the water pump?

Nah, a coolant leak from some sensor