My Chevelle has developed a loud whistling noise recently. At first I thought it was a vacuum leak. I went ahead and replaced all vacuum lines. No luck there. The water pump was next. There was a lot of play in the fan. I replaced the water pump, whistling still there. When the whistling was first noticeable, it would go away when after about 10 minutes. Now, it's become more frequent. Not sure what else to tackle. Any help would be appreciated.

PCV valve? maybe cracked or hose not all the way on!

I replaced all vac hoses. Turned out to be the bearing in the alternator...starting to tighten up. I removed the belt to the alternator and the noise disappeared. New alternator going in today. Thanks for the suggestion "etracer."

Could be a vacume leak around the intake or carb base gasket,or I had one whistling on the ends of the butterfly (choke) shaft.

Try spraying WD-40 or something like that around the suspect area while the car is running.
It will act as a vacume blocker temporaily (spelling) while being sucked in and should stop the whistle long enough to pinpoint the problem if indeed there is a leak somewhere.


Good luck.

sorry didn't see your last post. But it does work....

I get a whining noise in my car,,,,, its coming from my passinger seat,,,, and a little from under my hood smile.gif

I tried some WD-40 around the intake and base of the carb. No change. The howling (alt bearing) is gone with the alt belt off. I'm pretty sure that the alternator is on it's way out. Another question...I was advised to change over to a 1 wire alternator. Do I simply remove the wires that go to the voltage regulator? Any other wiring changes required? Yes, I'm a novice...still learning. Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks...JH

I don't claim to be an expert on the one wire BUT I just did a CS130 Conversion for my 72. All the research I did indicated that the one wire is not really the best for street driven cars. I can't even recall the reason let alone tell ya if the reason was a good one That is to say I cannot tell ya if the logic seemed valid as to why the one wire is a bad idea: something about 1 wire alts and farm equipment applications.

Likely there will be all sorts of "I have a one wire alternator and it is fine" responses and that is where you make your choice and ya pay your money. I don't mean to bash the 1 wire operators with the Farm equipment statemt but I hate screwing around with electricity and I research this conversion very deeply before I went with the CS130. During that research I read about the farm stuff and it made sense. Farm equipment does not have a lot of accessories on it so for some reason the 1 wire is OK is all I can tell ya.

Go to MAD Electrics web site. He has a BUNCH of good reading on conversions.

If you pull out the current alternator you indeed can remove the wires going to the old alternator. The one wire alts obviously have one wire but like I said there is something about sensing load and I dunno just not something I was looking at closely enough to bother to read up on. If you go to an internal regulator alternator like the CS130 you also dump all the wires to your alternator but you end up adding a sensing that runs to your main distribution block. That wire tells the CS130 how to react to loads on the alt. You also need another wire from to the CS 130 and for the life of me I cannot recall what that did.

If you go to a bigger output alternator you should increase the wire size from the main output on the alt to the main distrib block and also increase the the size of a wire that runs from the distrib block down to the starter solenoid.

To all - I did some research on the net and decided it was not worth the effort to convert. Our Chevelle is an every day driver and I can't afford to have the car down too long. I installed a new alternator today...the loud howling is gone. Obviously bearings were gone. Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

JH

I have a 140 amp 3 wire. Good link below about alt wiring. Helped me decide which way to go.
http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/onewire-threewire.shtml

Interesting info on alternators. Thanks.