Hey guys,


Today while changing my water pump I was surprised to see what I found when I took the belt off the supercharger pulley's shaft. That pulley's shaft completely broke and separated at the half point and was perfectly covered/hidden under the belt. As a matter of fact, the separated piece was being held in place ONLY by the belt yet remained perfectly aligned with the other half of the pulley. Crazy!! Sadly I thought the noise it was making was the idler pulley which I also purchased and was going to install today. Upon inspection, the idler pulley was is very good condition and smooth as silk. The worn out bearing sound was actually the broken SC pulley's shaft. I have had the SC pulley for about 16 months and have had NO issues until now.


Has anyone else had issues like this? Does anyone know what causes this?


This is concerning to me and I have honestly -NO idea how long this issue has been going on. With the hood shut, there is not a noticeable noise.


I'll be calling EC tomorrow to see what they have to say.


Let me know what you guys thing. Attached pics may be hard to see, I rarely download photos...


Thanks!

 

These showed up some time back, I'll see if I can find the thread.
It is a EC pulley.
What material is yours , steel or aluminum. Obviously the material is too thin no matter what material it is. They will probably all fail at some point.
If it is aluminum then it will fail for sure as aluminum cannot take the strain of the belt over the areas not supported by the bearing, it gets brittle due to these stresses and breaks. The one in the photos below broke into three pieces.

Here is the thread, I deleted all my comments in it because some people like to think that all is rosy in this world and we should not warn others of impending failures. After you read this thread you can see who they are. I was even banned from the Face Book site because I am to disruptive and supposedly called them all idiots, strange as I have never posted on FB in my life.

 

Thanks OneHundred80! Yup, looks familiar. My pulley is definitely aluminum and I probably have about 10K miles on it w/o issues. This is frustrating because I didn't spot it earlier. Oddly, there is enough of the connected pulley to run the supercharger. It performs as usual but now it's parked until I can get a replacement. I am confident that EC will make it right. Maybe I need to find a steel one. This could have thrown the belt off and caused damage under the hood. I guess I DID catch it in time.

 

Update

I Called Eurocharged today and told them what was going on with the pulley. I sent a few pictures and just as expected, Eurocharged came through and made it right. My new pulley is on its way. I have always had great service from those guys.

 

Yes maybe great service but yours is not the first EC pulley to fail in that same way (although I think the other EC pulley failures we've seen were their 61mm pulleys - not totally sure about that). Did you ask EC if the replacement pulley they are sending you is different / improved / better than the one that just failed? I think that would be a fair question.

 

I think I read somewhere that their pulleys are now steel.
Their so called 61mm pulley is actually 61.9mm. That size has failed before. The wall thickness on them is not too much at all (.153") and the abrupt changes in the inside diameters make for good places for fractures to occur.
The wall on the 65mm would be .214". That's if the grooves were the same as the OEM ones, which is .140.

 

I have a Code3 aluminum pulley which went bad. It didn't break like your EC pulley, mine wore out the rivets in a year. Keep an eye on that new pulley once it's installed, just in case.

Les

 

I would hope so! Is there any chance of user error when installing it causing it to pre-maturely wear out? Seems to me it is an inferior designed product.

I was thinking about getting a pulley and a tune from them, but to me it seems like there isn't one with a low failure rate.

 

makes you wonder what the 62's will do......mind you - this is only two reported failures in 2-3 years.....probably hundreds out there....

 

Update;

I got the new 65mm SC Pulley from EC yesterday and put it on today. The new pulley is steel, much heavier and (oddly) painted glossy black with a ultra smooth finish including the pulley grooves. Installation, including a new belt went smooth. 15 minutes, no surprises.

Now I have a new concern. Under heavy load there is an initial screeching noise which I am not familiar with. If you jump on hard and it downshifts into 1st or 2nd gear, the screeching noise and a slight loss of power occur simultaneously. When all settles down (.25-.50 seconds later) my car feels like it has more power and accelerates like hell! More specifically the noise is similar to tire screeching at the track. I have the stock pulley set up, no pulley saver kit or belt wrap kit installed. Otherwise, it very quiet while running.

Is this belt slip? Can anyone describe the sound/symptoms of belt slip? Would this also be caused by the ultra smooth SC pulley grooves and a brand new belt? This is new to me.

Thanks for your help.

 

It sounds like some belt slip …. but I've never experienced it myself. Do you have a pulley saver kit?

Les

 

Yes, your belt is slipping. You need to install either the Needswings pulley saver kit or the LateModel21 belt wrap kit. Actually as much as I love Needswings, I prefer the LateModel21 belt wrap kit. Either will provide additional belt wrap around the supercharger pulley to eliminate belt slippage AND they also eliminate the OEM idler pulley which is a known failure issue.

 

Latemodel21's BWK doesn't eliminate the idler pulley, but swaps it to a smooth aluminum pulley to provide far more belt wrap than the NW pulley saver kit. I've personally made a few pulleys lm21 doesn't include in his kit to accentuate the look. Eventually I'll move on to making complete pulley kits for the NA models, but that will be later this year.

 

Uhhh Chuk, I said they eliminate the OEM idler pulley and that is correct.

 

One eliminates, the other replaces. So you're half right.

 

Thanks guys,

I appreciate your responses. I thought it was belt slip but not sure as its a"new one" for me.
Looks like I'll need to choose a kit. Does anyone know if latemodel1's BWK is available and how much? I'm also interested in needswings PSK but want to do some pricing and more research. I'm glad this forum has members who know so much about our cars.

Current mods,
65mm EC SC pulley
NW DCAI + K&N high flow filters
EC tune
new NKG plugs + Magnecore wires
Oil catch can

 

latemodel21 is the forum name for Chris who developed and manufactured the LateModel2 belt wrap kit (as well as several other great items). You can see some information here:

https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...tml#post764606

You can contact Chris by finding any post by latemodel21 like this one:

https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...tml#post817961

Click on latemodel21 in the upper left corner of his post and then from the drop down menu click on

Send a private message to latemodel21 OR Send email to latemodel21

Information on the Needswings Pulley Saver Kits can be found here:

http://www.needswings.com/Products.a...1-885537264510

 

 

There is a third option, Tighed1's belt wrap solution. It doesn't cost much and is easy to do. I added a brace to the additional pulley for extra support and iot seems to do the job.

 

As i have had BOTH kits, Chuk is right. NW PSK elminates the idler pulley (next to the blower pulley) whereas the LM21 BWK replaces that oem pulley with a billet smooth unflanged pulley. I just installed this kit last week. Im not saying you're wrong, im just saying you're not right