Last week I started having an issue with my belt coming off the pulleys. I suspect that it is the power steering pump pulley, the pump, or both. Today I was going to go buy parts, but I wanted to check here first.

When I spin the pulley by hand it seems to have some resistance, and will spin on it's own for roughly a quarter turn after I have taken my fingers off it. ( I stop the pulley from spinning, and it does this once I let go of it.) Is this normal, or is the shaft on the pump screwed up as well?

 

Can't say for sure if its normal or not. Does the pump or pulley seem to vibrate when the truck is running? How tight is the tensioner and is the harmonic balancer on tight as well? Sometimes they wobble a bit and the belt came come off.

 

Nothing vibrates, and as far as I can tell the tensioner is keeping the belt in range. I've checked everything too to see if the bolts are tight, and they are.

 

Are the edges of the belt wearing out? If you remove the belt and spin the pulleys do they shake or make any noise from the bearings? And is the power steering pump pulley metal or plastic? The plastic ones are known to crack and do wacky things.

 

The power steering pulley does have a sound like a bearing going out when I spin it back and forth. That's why I suspect that it's the culprit. The belt also has a frayed edge, but I don't know when that happened. The belt has come off twice last week, so it has gotten beaten up just from that. It's a metal pulley.

 

Frayed edges tells me you probably have a pulley somewhere out of alignment and the belt is rubbing against the side of the pulley, sometimes you can see the shinny polished edge where its been rubbing. Could be the power steering pump or something else.

 

My old pump was making my belt throw.

 

Well on sat I was going to buy just the pulley and see if that worked, but it's a special order part everywhere by me. Rather sad because all but one auto store has the power steering pump in stock.

I'm going to go to the "pick and pull" junkyard today and get a pump and pulley. I'm under the assumption that any power steering pump on a 4.9L in the 90's will work for this truck. Am I correct on this? I was told that I would need the pulley off of either a 94 or 95 though. Would that also be correct? The only thing I know about the pumps is that one is metric threads and the other is standard.

 

Got my power steering pump pulley on just now. I ended up using the tool from harbor freight. It works ok for a cheap piece of junk throw away tool. Would of borrowed one from an auto store, but I didn't know when I would get around to completing this.

I decided to replace the tensioner pulley as well. Now I have some concerns. Is the tensioner pulley suppose to sit slightly inside of the power steering pump pulley? I didn't pay attention to this earlier, so I don't know if this is how it has always been. I'm rather hesitant to put my belt on until I find out about this.

 

Mine does that because I need a new one.