I thought I was getting belt squeeling under hard acceleration, so I replaced the belts. the sound is still there. the manual tensioner on the AC compressor did seem to have a little side play in it. could that be the culprit?

 

no information about the car = useless, unanswerable question.

 

turbo makes a whistling sound, thats probably what your hearing assuming you have a 1.8T

but we need a ton more info

 

quattro?

haha jk.. but seriously they got a point, is it 1.8 or 2.8? manula or auto? or u driving fast and furious style or what? how many miles on the car? any CEL on? ggrrrr

 

Sorry, I thought I had all the info typed into my garage, but I don't. Its a 97' quattro 1.8T. under normal driving you never hear it, just when you put your foot in it. thats why I thought the belts were slipping. (sounded just like it). there's no CEL on. I bought the car with 86K miles and has now turned 91K. I was going to change the timing belt while I had the front end pulled off, but it looks like the previous owner beat me to it. (belt looked like new & timing cover had a crack in it.) The noise doesn't appear to affect the performance, just kinda irritating is all.

 

If you don't know 100% fact that the T-belt was changed, you should really change it. How do you know someone didn't just crack the cover to look at the T-belt and never actually changed it?

As for the squeal, remove the belts and take a quick drive without the accessory belts (just enough to determine the sound... no longer). If the noise is gone, you've found the culprit.

 

Could it possibly be the turbo spool? I've seen things where the turbos fan blades get fucked up and then the car screams haha