I followed a recent thread in the Discovery section where they were talking about noisy fan belts, crook/squealing pulleys and even of pulleys walking off their shafts with the result being a lot of under bonnet damage when the still spinning fan belt parted company with home base and whipped around out of control near the radiator and other bits and pieces.

Well being the eternal pessimist that I am [I'm a Landy driver so what's new....lol] I began listening to my Rangie LSE's serpentine belt. Yes - it talked a lot most of the time and yes it was particularly bad on first of the day cold starts but I thought nothing of it. It always seemed to be like this. And after all, the car is serviced every 5000 kms or 6 months religiously so there couldn't be any real dramas happening could there......?? Hmmmmmm!

Anyway to cut a long story short there was a problem - or two. The alternator pulley was noisy along with the brushes being worn down a bit so it wasn't punching out quite the necessary amount of charging volts which it should so on goes a brand new alternator. And then there was a noisy belt tensioner so on goes a belt tensioner kit.

And what a difference this has made to the car...all I hear now is that wonderful throb and growl of a still nearly new V8 engine. Bloody marvelous!

But first of the day starts still sees the aftermarket belt squealing for a minute or two so it will be replaced with a genuine serpentine belt.

So thanks Disco guys for the heads up.