Pulley noise - can I do a longish journey

[MonaroMad]

My LS2 Monaro has an intermittent fault, one of the pulleys on the drive system is making a continuous metal on metal sound, sounds like a bad bearing of some sort. Sometimes it goes entirely, sometimes it's very loud and sometimes not too bad.

I think it might be one of the pulleys on the aux belt (it's the two tensioner version between the crank and aircon compressor). I suppose it could be the aircon compressor itself.

The noise is annoying but inaudible from inside the car. I need to make a fairly long journey next week before I can realistically fix it or get it fixed, is this a major risk to the drive system? I don't want a boiled engine!

[snowwolf]

If you think it's one of the air con belt pulleys just take the belt off or just cut it off if you did not want the hassle of putting a spanner on the tensioner, if the noise stops all well and good, if the noise continues I would not drive it till it's sorted, if a pulley bearing decides to seize up it can cause other damage when belt comes off.

[MonaroMad]

snowwolf said:

If you think it's one of the air con belt pulleys just take the belt off or just cut it off if you did not want the hassle of putting a spanner on the tensioner, if the noise stops all well and good, if the noise continues I would not drive it till it's sorted, if a pulley bearing decides to seize up it can cause other damage when belt comes off.

That's a really good idea actually - the aircon needs regassing anyway so no big loss regardless (and it's not exactly aircon weather yet!)

Dreading having to do the journey in a Mondeo