Noisy Belts

[Eliminator46]

Hello C5! I'm sure there is a post somewhere along the way about Noisy Belts, but I simply want to share my scenerio with ya'll and potentially prevent an unnecessary trip to the shop. I had a noisy belt back at the 17K mile mark and supposedly had it replaced under warranty at the shop. Not being witness to what actually took place under the hood, I took it for granted that the belts were changed. Content with the quite running, I am now at 38K miles. Low and behold, the noisy belts are back. Out of the Factory Warranty, I decided to buy the belts myself. I am an oldschool Mechanic that got of of that line of work in the 90's and capable of working on just about anything. Discovery that GM had went to the "Stretch Fit" belts with no tensioner on the A/C belt, I did a little Googling first. I bought the Gates belts with the Gates stretch fit tool. Pulled the beast out of the garage yesterday to do a quick belt change. That's when I noticed the A/C belt had jumped over 1 notch at the balancer pulley. Strange, but not unusual I supposed. Checking the allignment of the pulleys, they appear alligned. Simply turning the balancer clockwise at the bolt with with breakover bar and socket, pushing the A/C belt back, making sure I didn't get my thumb stuck, I was able to get it back to the groove it needed to be in.
I am convinced that the stretch fit "Anything" is going to be a headache for life with this vehicle as HorsePower and hot rubber without a tensioner will move anything when it's rapped out while Hot Rodding.
This task is an easy fix by removing the engine cover, front flex air box, Surpentine belt and that gives you room to play at the Balancer and A/C belt, as long as you do this early when you hear the belts start squealing. If you drive for extended period I can imagine it will eventually trash the belt, leaving the potential for being stranded when the trashed A/C belts trashes the surpentine belt at failure.
I hope this helps some fellow Camaro Owner!
Adam