Hello, I have a 97 Civic 4D LX, automatic, non vtec. Recently the car has been making a strange high pitched screech/wine occasionally. Since this has been happening, the car appears to be getting worse MPG based on the gas gauge. When the screech happens, the gas gauge moves down and then will go back up to where it was before a little while afterwards. When I first noticed the noise I was traveling down the highway at 60mph with the RPM's approximately 2500. The noise would also happen when slowing down with the RPM's around 1300. All of the belts look/feel ok on the car and it does not sound like a belt. It does not happen all of the time and there is no real pattern for when it happens. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks for your help!

 

Sounds like your alternator is dying.

 

A/C for me ... but i beleve alt..also
a/c bearings are going or tensioner maybe...
To know if this is the problem, move p/s pump out of the way loose the a/c tensioner and remove belt out of the way with p/s belt...complitly remove belt off the bottom crank before start...I personally when thru this recently...

 

Without a sound/video clip (at least for me) I agree with the above poster about the alternator...any other symptoms such as lights dimming? Other gauges acting funny?

 

Thanks for the help. We'll have to try some things and see what we can find.