Ok, I've followed someone's excellent suggestion to check the fuel
pump, but it's humming away like an Accutron watch (for you old folks
<g>).  By listening through a tube, I've localized the noise to the
crank pulley - oil pump area; however, listening to the oil pump with
a stethoscope it sounds perfectly happy.  Could this be a dry seal of
some sort?  Obviously I can't use the stethoscope on the crank pulley.
:-/  Seems pretty clear at this point that at least the crank pulley
will have to come off, but what should I be looking for at that point?
Can't run it without cooling long enough for the noise to develop,
unless I'm amazingly lucky...

thanks,
david

>Hi -- having driven the beast (84 Westy) around a bit I have a much
>better description of the noise which is driving me crazy (with
>perplexity and apprehension).  It sounds almost exactly like a
>squealing belt, maybe not so high pitched.  It comes and goes,
usually
>appears when I rev to maybe 2000 rpm.  It *does NOT* !!! change pitch
>with engine rpm, but tends to get drowned out as the revs go up.
When
>idling down, the noise stays about the same until idle or nearly
there
>-- then the pitch goes *up* slightly and either stays that way or
>disappears.  It is not alternator or water pump related, because it
>persists with the belt off.  It persists if I shut off the ignition
>(until the motor slows down through idle speed).  It doesn't care
>about motor load, accel-decel. It sounds dangerous.  I dasn't drive
it
>much.

David Beierl <dbeierl@ibm.net>
401 274-5827 voice, -6349 fax
OS/2 V4, FP7, JVM 1.1.6, JSM 98.6.3