Early last week my 07 caliber sxt started to make a grinding-ish noise at low idle about as soon as the car reached 1500 rpms. After a few days it was anytime my foot was on the gas I listened under the hood and the noise seemed to be coming from the right-hand side of the engine. A few days later I started it up and the batter light turned on. I deduced that that battery light + grinding noise from the area of the pulleys = alternator. I took the belt off and started the car, there was no noise, then spun all the pulleys (idler and tension included) by hand and there wasn't any noticeable noise on any of them save the ac pulley. There wasn't a grinding noise there but it seemed to be the only one that I could actually hear spinning. Well I took the alternator off anyway and took it to oriely's to have it tested but it turns out that they have to have my particular alternator on the vehicle for testing. So now for the questions. Does this sound like an alternator problem? Are there other sources for all of these symptoms? Should I just buy a new alternator because the ones on these cars are notoriously bad? I guess I should also note that spinning the alternator pulley with it off the car makes no sound also.

 

sounds like the pulley is bad. Here is some info https://dodgeforum.com/forum/dodge-c...lley-info.html

 

Since this post I bolted everything back on and had the alternator tested and it passed at 2 different shops. I had a buddy take a loook as well as a mechanic near my house and neither could pin point the pulley that was causing the noise but thought it could be the ac pulley. The noise is louder in the front and bottom but is so loud no matter where you are listening it seems to come from that area. I'm going to have to make an appointment with the dodge dealer to have the a/c compressor checked I guess.

 

It is one of the two, usually the special alt pulley, but occasionally the a/c.