I have a '93 Honda Accord with 230,000 miles. Recently it’s been intermittently making a loud squealing noise when turning left or right at low speeds (like the squeaky sound you might hear when rubbing hard while cleaning glass). Doesn’t happen all the time and doesn’t happen when turning the wheel while standing still. It doesn’t occur until after the engine has warmed up. Sometimes I can drive for blocks and make frequent turns with no noise, sometimes I drive the same route and it squeals at every turn. The noise seems to be coming from the area of the steering wheel. Performance doesn’t seem to be affected. Does this sound like something that needs immediate attention? The car is overdue for a new timing belt, but I can’t afford that right now – could this be an indication the timing belt is going?
No - the timing belt will not squeal. It will simply break. The engine will very suddenly die. This event will also immediately wreck your engine (it has one of those “interference” designs). If you can’t get the $$ for a timing belt, how will you afford the engine or new car? You might want to figure that out. FYI: a lot of the cost of the belt is labor, but a lot of the cost is in other stuff that gets done (e.g. water pump) just b/c its the same labor. Most towns have a “just get me by” kind of shop. A long time ago with an old beater car while I was in grad school I had such a shop do the belt only skipping all of the extras. I can’t recall how much it was, but it was a heck of a lot less than the normal, full job.
Anyway…the squeal is probably your serpentine/accessory belt. Most anyone should be able to change that for not much $$ in only a little bit of time.