Have a bearing noise at cold start up, bit like a very small turbo winding up. lol Goes away after 30 seconds or so.
Traced it to the idler for the power steering belt using the old trick of placing screwdriver on the non rotating part near the bearing and listening to the sound.

I believe that the pulley can be removed from the adjuster and the bearing replaced, as I have a very similar pulley left over from a second gen that has a circlip holding in the bearing.
(Could look at the manual I suppose . . . )

Am I on the right track here, or does the whole pulley and adjuster bracket need replacing? I'd like to know before I pull it out, so I know what parts I'm up for.
(I know that the other pulley at the front is a single unit.)

You can not use the second gen pulley

If you go to Mits they will try and sell you the complete bearing and arm for about $400 last time I checked but was a few years ago

I sell these on my ebay store (just the pulley)

Are you 100% this is the issue, next time you get this noise shut down the motor and restart after 10 seconds rest, if no noise then this is not your issue at all

Not intending to use the second gen pulley, I was wondering if the third gen pulley is of similar construction with a replaceable bearing. The manual is no help on this point.

As for the source of the noise, I will drop the ancillary belts and see if the noise goes away, but I will need to wait until the problem becomes more consistent. Currently only there for a short time at cold startup after the car has been sitting for a few days.

Got your eBay item earmarked just in case. lol

Best test to save you removing belts is simply to do as I stated above, start car in the morning, if noise is there immediately shut down and restart after 10 seconds. If noise has disappeared then is the timing belt pre tensioner that is giving you the issue. Has been very well documented in the forums and have even as recent as yesterday done one of these on a customers car for the exact same reason

Will do. Either way - idler bearing or belt tensioner - it's no big problem to fix. I will just wait for it to get worse, makes it easier to diagnose. lol

Neighbour across the road has a battered TW sedan that may be an ex taxi by the looks of it, mostly starts up well but at times has a horrible knock at cold idle which sounds like the belt tensioner. His solution to stop the noise is to take off at a great rate of knots, shuts the noise up as the revs go up. I'm just waiting for something to break. lol

My noise is nothing like that, more a dry bearing sound.