For a half minute or so after starting from cold there's a very noisy squealing sound like a bearing in distress coming from the auxilliary belt region. We just discovered that the A/C doesn't work but the squeal isn't when we try to turn it on, just when starting from cold. I'm wondering if these two things might be related. The battery isn't charging properly either (another thing that depends on the aux. belt) but that's [url=http://www.fordownersclub.com/forums/topic/24843-diagnosing-smart-charge/]another story[/url]

Any "usual suspects" in this area?

Had similar symptoms on our SportKA which suddenly got worse. I thought it was the Aux belt tensioner as that is quite common, but turned out to be the Water Pump.