Hi Les,

Your clearances seem awfully low! What do you mean by "disengages and engages" flawlessly? How are you checking this?

I just went for another ride, no burning rubber smell, belt looks ok and the ribs are all lined up properly. The only thing that is still bothering me is the pulley is still audible outside of the car (even with the hood down) and I don't recall hearing this before. It sounds like a constant metal grinding on metal. Not obnoxiously loud, but a few levels louder than I recall the stock pulley being.

With that said, I was worried the pulley was too close to the backplate, causing touching somewhere. However, if your clearances are as low as .11 and you don't have problems, I'm starting to second guess that theory. The lowest clearance I've measured is .19.

Coyote mentioned a possible bad bearing, though from what I've read a bad bearing is supposed to sound pretty darn loud, and I wouldn't consider this noise to be that bad. Not sure though...

Also, not sure if this matters, but on initial startup (cold) the pulley sounds fine. After a hard drive, the noise I described sounds much more audible.

???