Okay, not exactly what to make of this. I replaced the serpentine belt last weekend, ran the car all week and all of a sudden there's a VERY noticeable squeal coming from the power steering pump area. I do have quite a bit of ATF fluid from a small steering leak (think it's the hose connection) but even though the fluid has been low, it's never run dry. I did try to spray belt dressing with no joy... Could this be indicative of a potential pump failure? The steering itself seems to be perfectly fine, just very noisy.

 

does it sound like a belt squeal?
or does it sound like a bearing squeal?
have you bled your pump, it could have a air bubble

 

I was thinking it's belt squeal, but I'm not so sure about that. What usually happens is that it's silent as a church mouse at idle, but give the car gas and it screeches like Rosanne singing the national anthem... Again, I did try belt dressing, but with no luck... It seems to be coming from the PS pump area and I should point out that I did notice that the fluid had tiny bubbles in it, I wouldn't say "foamy", but like a shaken up soda bottle type bubbles... I did try and bleed the PS fluid though, did the whole lock to lock and waiting 10 secs each time. Is there a better way? Should I pull the return hose an bleed it similar to how I would bleed the brakes?

EDIT::
I've been poking around all over the site and have found a few posts similar to this which refer to the alternator being the culprit. Is there a way I can test either or both to see if they are okay? I don't seem to have any electrical problems that I've noticed and no codes are being thrown.

 

There are two methods I have used to try and find the culprit - be careful that you don't get tangled in the belt.

Method 1 - Using a piece of hose (like rubber gas line) and hold one end to your ear while you hold the other by different pulleys along the belt. Or you could buy a stethoscope.

Method 2 - Take a wooden dowel about a 1/2 inch in diameter and a couple of feet long. Plug your ears with your fingers and bite on the end of the dowel. Touch the other end of the dowel to the various things running off the belt. If one of them has a bad bearing you will defiantly hear it.

These may not be fancy methods but they will defiantly help you pin point where your noise is coming from.

 

Are you sure you installed the new belt properly?

They updated the belt length and routing on the 850; if you buy a new belt and route it the same way as the original, it will be a bit loose. Is your's good and taut?

 

It may not be related at all. I would pull the belt and start the car to see if you still have a squeal. It could be a timing belt idler or if it's happening while driving, it could be your transmission. The transmission in one of my cars squeal.

 

This is exactly what I did last night. I stopped on my way home last night and picked up a stethoscope for 10 bucks which I used to isolate the problem. Come to find out that it was indeed the tensioner pulley as rspi indicates I put a dozen or so drops of 10-30 to lube it up and the squealing is completely gone, however I'm going to buy a new one today and throw it on this weekend.

gdog: Yea, I found out the hard way that they changed the routing of that belt! I have a printout of the shop manual which has a routing diagram in it, but thing is, it's the OLD one! Was driving me nuts until I remembered seeing somewhere that they changed the routing on these cars. I was able to pull the updated diagram from IPD