1998 Buick century has multiple failures and I’m about to get my car towed. If I can’t figure it out, please help.

[Buick gogo69]

For a few days before my car died there was a squeaking noise coming from the belt area, and when I pulled up to a gas station, the car wouldn’t start again, and I tried jump boxes and jumping the battery itself with no luck. During the testing phase I just described, someone had damaged the starter so I took the battery in and the starter and replaced both. When I went to fire up the car within 10 seconds, it was billowing smoke. The car did start at that time. But I had to instantly turn it off. When I got to look under the hood after that, I noticed that the belt had snapped completely in half and put a bunch of rubber melting pieces, all over the pulleys and elsewhere. So thinking that it was just a bad belt from the original squeaking noises. I got a new serpentine belt and installed it, but when I went to start it, it started to smoke again, so I adjusted the pulleys and sidenote, I did clean all of the rubber off of all the pulleys. Now it won’t even crank over and I have loosened it up significantly. It barely does a half turn on the longest part of the belt. And it makes it horrible screeching, and grinding noise when it was trying to start before the failures I mentioned at the end. I have not honestly heard that noise come from the engine it almost sounds like a pulley is way too tight or the starter was no good but after all of that, I just want some advice on where to start looking because I’ve gotten my second parking patrol notice, and Can’t afford to have my car taken with everything in it when I have the abilities to fix it if I just know where to look please help

 

[MelsRegal]

Sounds like one of the pulleys the belt wraps around is seized. It also sounds like the battery is dead.

 

[BuickMan87]

The starter takes some good power to turn your motor. Folks make the mistake of assuming the starter is bad when it might be a power source. If you're battery is dead and the starter is dead that might be a sign that your battery isn't getting juice. One thing that can go bad and squeak and even seize the alternator. If it's failing it won't charge your battery enough to get your car going and the alternator will perform like it's malfunctioning when it's really just not getting any juice. Pulley issues on this car are easy to diagnose. It's either the alternator pully, power steering pully, water pump pulley or crank pulley or tensioner pulley that will make it squeak. It's least likely to be the crank. To me it sounds like one of your other pulleys failed and causing the alternator to stop charging thus draining your battery. You should be able to freehand spin (with the belt off) any pulley aside form the crank to figure out which one isn't spinning freely and or making strange noise. PS. It helps to remove the fuse box out the way so you can stick your hand down in there and do this testing.