> When the weather is cold, usually in the morning, i can hear my belts

> squeal pretty loudly (at least, through the firewall). If I roll my

> windows down, I can hear them too, especially if there is a wall or car

> next to me echoing the sound.

> What do I need to do to quiet this problem? I had the belts replaced

> not too long ago, maybe they need to be tightened a little?

First off, you can often isolate which belt is squealing by spraying a fine stream of water on the belts one at a time while blipping the throttle. As you observed, a cold engine will make this more obvious.

Take a sighting down the alt pulley and then down the p/s pump pulley with a straight edge. They should be aligned with the crank and water pump pulleys. If not then the thimble sized rubber bushings in the hinge points of the alternator, p/s pump or a/c compressor mounting brackets are probably compressed. That's what the others are talking about. Seems to be a very common problem with 240's as they get older. The alternator bracket front bushing is usually the worst.

Misaligned pulleys will cause the belts to want to "walk" up the pulley v-grooves. The resulting vibration is that stuck pig sound. As has been pointed out, you can alleviate the noise temporarily by de-glazing the belts and pulleys, by applying sticky belt dressing liquid or by installing new belts, but the noise will just return if there is a fundamental alignment problem.

The proper fix is to replace the bushings and restore pulley alignment. Follow this with a belt/pulley de-glazing and you should be good for a few years. Always re-check alignment with the belts tensioned. If you're desparately cheap, you can try to rotate or switch the old bushings around or use shims behind the mounting brackets to restore alignment.

Belts should be snug, not floppy nor taught -there is a subtle difference. The "rule of thumb" I've always gone by is to have about a 1/4" deflection on the longest belt span using medium thumb pressure. New belts may need re-tensioning after they've broken in. New belts are usually installed a little on the tight side because of this. The worst thing you can probably do is over-tighten the belts. The squeal will go away all right, but you'll be placing an excessive strain on all the pulley shaft bushings. A pre-maturely failed water pump or alternator will be the result. You can even crack the water pump pulley with enough effort.

It's really your choice whether you go with the cheaper OEM-style rubber bushings or with ipd's tougher poly bushings -you get what you pay for. Oh yeah, and all accessory mounting brackets normally use the same size bushings.