I recently bought a 1998 Acura 3.5 RL with around 200,000 miles on it or so. Since i got it a few days ago the a belt, pulley bearing or something under the hood has been squealing. To me it had the sound of a squealing belt so thats what i was looking at first and i noticed one of the 3 belts that go around the crank is rubbing against the pulley next to it causing it to fray. It is also causing the belt to pitch at a slight angle where its rubbing against the other pulley. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? Could this just be a worn out belt? Or am i looking at something worse like a bent pulley? I have checked to make sure its correctly seated on the pulleys which it is.

 

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Almost appears as though there could be a missing spacer between the two pulleys. That's assuming it IS two separate pulleys that are stacked. Might be just the camera angle, but also appears the two other belts are angled somewhat. That would also be consistent with some kind of spacing problem. I'm not inclined to think bent pulley, you would notice that when it was running.

I did some browsing and most of what I see on that are serpentine setups and not v-belts. Either way, if that pulley is a harmonic balancer and not just a solid pulley, it may be bad.

 

Clearly something is out of alignment meaning some engine related work has been done and was not installed correctly.

The task now is to find out what is not installed correctly and reinstall/adjust!

 

i would look at the crank pulley its self they are known to come apart.