Bulk buy for 1st Gen Lightweight Pulley - NOT Underdrive

[csoehn]

wow all this talk about the bad lightweight pulleys begins to worry me

i have a PP lightweight pulley and Fidanza in my F2T.....i love it....you wouldnt notice the benifits from the pulley on its own though, but throw a fiddanza in there and they seem to compliment each other

the lightweight pulley is like 1/3 the weight or less than the stocker.....PP claims that its so light that it doesnt need to be balanced and although that argument seems weak i think its true in this case....these pulleys are CNC machined and would come out pretty balanced the way they are....they are good quailty

the others that have this pulley seem happy and i still havnt heard of anybody blowing an engine

if anything a Fidanza and lightweight pulley will help lessen the load on a crankshaft and extend its life by not putting as much strain on the bearings

i think somebody should take a PP pulley in and see how out of balance it is....because i bet it isnt at all or is very close

is the Unothodox underdrive pulley balanced? or i suppose that causes catastrphic engine failure as well

anyways Jake good luck with productoin and selling of these, they seem to go like hotcakes and when you hold that lightweight pulley in your hand and the stock harmonic balancer in the other the difference is amazing

[moebius]

The PP Underdrive pulley is not damped either. Both pulleys are chunks of billet aluminum, machined to particular sizes.

It has nothing to do with balance- it is about damping vibrations. The engine will not blow, the bearings will wear out faster, because of excess vibrations. 4 cylinder, non-boxer vibrations, are inherently unbalanced - the power stroke causes end to end vibrations. With out damping, or balancer shafts, the bearings wear out faster than they would in other engine layouts.

Having the whole engine/crank/pulley balanced will help a little bit, and should be done regardless, but it doesn't change the damping of the engine. Having balance shafts effectively eliminated the need for a damper on four cylinder engines, alternatively, a boxer engine doesn't need to worry about a damper either.

The fact of the matter is that it won't destroy an engine, nor am I suggesting that. It will drastically reduce the life of that engine, requiring the main bearings to be rebuilt and replaced far more often than an engine with a damper would. The stock engines are known to last upwards of 250k miles. We are talking about ruining the bearings in 20-50k. This is not a modification that should be done on a car which is regularly used. For track-only, or weekend only vehicles, this is fine.

I'm trying to protect people from their own ignorance.

By all means, Jake should go ahead with this. This is good for those people who want to reduce (along with a lightweight flywheel) the total spinning mass. Don't forget to remove the P/S, and remove the A/C. Heck, all your really need is an alternator, and for a serious track car, that is too much anyway -- you just need a big enough battery, and an auxiliary battery charger. In these cases, a lightweight pulley is an excellent choice.

Otherwise, for those who desire an inexpensive to maintain, reliable car, which is still fun to drive, well.... forget this mod.

I'm warning people, and hoping that they will be somewhat educated about the disadvantages of an undamped pulley.

Of further note, you can get away with undamped pulleys on many many other cars, and you can get away with an undamped pulley on an F2/F2T -- for a while, but it will come back to bite you when you least expect it. I'm just saying, don't get bitten.

[csoehn]

Originally Posted by moebius

The PP Underdrive pulley is not damped either. Both pulleys are chunks of billet aluminum, machined to particular sizes.

PP isnt underdrive, but ya you are right they are just alumunim chunks that are machined

well ive never heard of this before so it sounds kinda scary cause you do sound like you know what ur talking about, maybe i'll throw on my stocker and put my $100 into something else

[d0zxmustang]

Sounding like you know what your talking about and acually knowing is two, totally differant things.

To the one that is saying it will damage your engine and that F2's are not balanced is dead wrong.

Have you acually ever looked at a F2 crank? What do you think those drilled holes in the crank are? They are balanced from the factory. If they werent, they would blow apart on the dealers lot.

The stock pulley isnt damping anything. They arent filled with anything, except a thin layer of adhesive that hold the outer ring and the center piece together. The F2 is internally balanced, meaning that the external attachments are balaced independantly. As long as the flywheel and pulley are balanced within a resonable range, there will be know problem.

A harmonic damper is filled with usally epoxy, you drill through a F2 pulley and let e know how much you find, o yeah, NONE! Its not filled, solid metal except for the thin layer of the adhisive.

Carl, rest assured your engine is fine....

[proberider]

Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet anyway...

[moebius]

Originally Posted by d0zxmustang

Have you acually ever looked at a F2 crank? What do you think those drilled holes in the crank are? They are balanced from the factory. If they werent, they would blow apart on the dealers lot.

Um, like I said before, It simply doesn't matter if the crank shaft has been balanced or not. Without changing the configuration(e.g. to horizonally opposed,- aka boxer style) or adding balancer shafts (like the MZR line), then 4 cylinder engines are *never* balanced - the order of piston firing creates end to end vibrations. Period.


I'm not going argue any more, the stock main crankshaft pulley *is* a damped pulley. And *no* you do not use epoxy on a harmonic balancer - you use rubber, and it doesn't have to be very thick - in fact, the thickness is related to what rpm speeds it most effectively dampens out.

I'm against mis-information. As long as people understand *exactly* what a lightweight pulley does for them, that's fine . I don't want any ignorant people buying a lightweight flywheel pulley. That is one thing which sets MX6.com apart from many many many other Car related websites.

Originally Posted by d0zxmustang

attachments are balaced independantly. As long as the flywheel and pulley are balanced within a resonable range, there will be know problem.

I dunno wtf yer talkin bout, willis, butcher dangonne englush skelz ar sou pour dat ah donut think yah NO whatcha talkin bout.

Seriously, V8 engines can get away with little to no harmonic balancers. Straight 6 engines don't need them either. Straight five cylinders only need them if they want to reliable run at high rpms. BUT 4 cylinder engines are the worst. Why don't you read some of my links above, dealing with engine smoothness. Jake didn't get why I posted those at first, because they had *nothing* To do with harmonic balancers, rather it had to do with why engines aren't smooth, aka, why they vibrate.

There are numerous 4 cylinder engines which have the balancer shafts, for example the F22 series from Honda,

Aww, crapnuts, read this for another explaination:


Straight-4 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Balance and smoothness

The straight-4 engine is much smoother than one, two, and three cylinder engines, and this has resulted in it becoming the engine of choice for most economy cars. However, the straight-4 is not a fully balanced configuration. While it is in primary balance because one pair of pistons is always moving up at the same time as the other pair is moving down, piston speed - as with all internal combustion engines - is higher through the top 180 degrees of the crankshaft rotation than the bottom 180 degrees. Since two pistons are always moving faster in one direction while two others are moving more slowly in the other, this leads to a secondary dynamic imbalance - an up-and-down vibration at twice crankshaft speed. This imbalance is tolerable in a small, low-displacement, low-power configuration, but the vibrations get worse with increasing size and power.

Most straight-4 engines below 2.0 L in displacement rely on the damping effect of their engine mounts to reduce the vibrations to acceptable levels. Above 2.0 L, most modern straight-4 engines now use balance shafts to eliminate the second-order imbalance. A straight-4 needs two balance shafts, rotating in opposite directions at twice crankshaft speed, to offset the differences in piston speed. Nevertheless, in the past there were several samples of larger straight-4s in production using no balance shafts, such as the Citroën DS 23 2347 cc engine that was a derivative of the Traction Avant engine, the 1948 Austin 2660 cc engine used in the Austin-Healey 100 and Austin Atlantic, the 3.3 L flathead engine used in the Ford Model A (1927), and the 2.5 L GM Iron Duke engine used in a number of American cars and trucks. These engines were generally the result of a long incremental evolution process and their power was kept relatively low compared to their capacity.

Four-cycle four cylinder engines have another problem in that the power strokes of the pistons do not overlap. With four cylinders and four cycles to complete, each piston must complete its power stroke and come to a complete stop before the next piston can start a new power stroke, resulting in a pause between each power stroke and a pulsating delivery of power. In engines with more cylinders, the power strokes overlap, which gives them a smoother delivery of power and less vibration than a four can achieve. As a result, six and eight cylinder engines are generally used in more luxurious and expensive cars.

[moebius]

Originally Posted by csoehn

PP isnt underdrive, but ya you are right they are just alumunim chunks that are machined

I thought they made an underdrive pulley... Maybe the last iteration wasn't, but I'm pretty sure they had a lightweight underdrive pulley before.

Originally Posted by csoehn

well ive never heard of this before so it sounds kinda scary cause you do sound like you know what ur talking about, maybe i'll throw on my stocker and put my $100 into something else

It shouldn't be scary.
It's a trade-off.
The questions are:
(1) Is the trade of reliability for power worth it ?
(2) Is the price worth it for the unit supplied.

Everyone will have to answer number one for themselves. I'm trying to provide the complete story. If people want to do it, by all means, as mentioned before, the most gains (rather lack of losses, since it doesn't increase power) will be noticed if you already have a lightweight flywheel.

Think about that one, the whole goal of reducing spinning mass is allow the engine to do more "useful" (useful = propulsive) work. This is a good, and worthy goal. As a percentage of the total spinning mass, going from the stock pulley to the lightweight pulley, is a much much smaller effect than going from the stock flywheel to the lightweight flywheel. You will barely notice the effect of a lightweight pulley, *unless* you already have put a lightweight flywheel on. It is still there, and it will allow your engine to change RPMS faster than before, but the effect will be much less than if you have a lightweight flywheel. Add a light weight flywheel, and then the the difference of a lightweight pulley is a more noticable percentage of the total spinnig mass.

I'm not sure if I am making myself clear or not. Perhaps that was a bit dense.

The point is, I'm not saying a lightweight pulley is evil or terrible, or that it won't do what Jake (or anyone else claims), it will in fact do those things. It will also shorten the life of the main bearings, along with all other attached components, because it will not be absorbing vibrations, like the stock pulley was. The question is, which is more important, a little bit of performance, or the total lifetime of your engine.

I encourage people who are regularly racing their engines, or who are using their car infrequently (ie, not a daily driver, nor a grocery getter), to consider this modification. It's relatively cheap, and in combination with a lightweight flywheel, very responsive.

The people who should not be considering this, are the 16-21 year old inexperienced drivers, who only have one car --- their MX6, and they have to drive to school, or drive to work in it. That is who I am trying to warn, and the people who ought be spending $100 on keeping their car running well, rather than putting a shiny piece of aluminum on it, when the rest of the engine is covered in oil.

[proberider]

One of the things Starion/ Conquest guys do to their car is delete the balance shafts.

[moebius]

If you want to make power -(and sacrifice reliability), that's a good choice.

Why:
(1) Less moving parts = less friction = less lost power
(2) Less total rotating mass = easier to change rpms
(3) Less things to break/get in the way.

BUT,
(1) runs rougher - idle will be terrible
(2) harder on bearings/rotating bits -shortens engine life aka more frequent rebuilds


But if you are strictly building a race car, then neither of those things matter. Part of building a race engine is --- rebuild early, rebuild often.

It is a compromise, what do you want to give up to get power-- how much time do you have.

I have a lot of respect for those conquest/starion guys, next to the MX6, those are some of the best bang for your buck late 80's Japanese cars, or any cars period. Like the MX6, you can get a very fast car, for not very much money. Their problem is, there aren't many of them - MX6 are plentiful compared to Starion/Conquest.

*IF* you can find on in good condition, it's actually worth a bit of money, unlike an MX6/626 - which still isn't worth much, even in good condition.

If I didn't want a 4 door, I'd probably look real hard at a Starion. 2.4 or 2.6 liters of big bore stroked 4 cylinder turbo charged goodness...

[surfstar]

I have an Unorthodox Racing underdrive, lightweight pulley on my FS 2.0L -- How long till the bearings implode?

I had it installed during a t-belt change at around 83k miles back in 6/2001. I'm currently at 227k miles. Idles smooth, runs/pulls very smooth, doesn't burn/leak oil -- I'm hoping to get 300k out of it.

edit: my pulley is shiny blue aluminum, maybe that helps

[LMB__]

word!

com on, cant wait for the pulley

[moebius]

Originally Posted by surfstar

I have an Unorthodox Racing underdrive, lightweight pulley on my FS 2.0L -- How long till the bearings implode?

I had it installed during a t-belt change at around 83k miles back in 6/2001. I'm currently at 227k miles. Idles smooth, runs/pulls very smooth, doesn't burn/leak oil -- I'm hoping to get 300k out of it.

edit: my pulley is shiny blue aluminum, maybe that helps

Right. FS 2.0. A nice little 118 crank hp engine. Very economical engine.


Seriously.

Nice try.

Totally Different engine.

If you had a F2, or F2T, heck, or FE, F8, F8-DOHC, or FE-DOHC, then I'd be interested.

You have an FS. Totally unrelated motor. Different *EVERYTHING*, except made by mazda. Really, your FS is a 2.0 Liter B series. Aside from the fact it was made by Mazda, it isn't related in the slightest.

Abort, Retry... oh wait, I know... IGNORE.

[LMB__]

i understand you, but, i am building myself a "new" engine, that will only be used when crusing in weekends, and i have got your point that these pulleys "damages" the engine. the wierd thing is that ive never heard anything from the users using the pp.com pulley, shurly it got to have destroyed a lot of engines buy now? why havent anyone that acualy got one said anything?

[surfstar]

Originally Posted by moebius

BUT 4 cylinder engines are the worst. Why don't you read some of my links above, dealing with engine smoothness. Jake didn't get why I posted those at first, because they had *nothing* To do with harmonic balancers, rather it had to do with why engines aren't smooth, aka, why they vibrate.

There are numerous 4 cylinder engines which have the balancer shafts, for example the F22 series from Honda,

Seemed like you were talking about various 4cyl engines. I was giving first hand experience with one.

Also, as asked above, if they're so destructive; why aren't the bulletin boards filled with stories of "My underdrive pulley killed my engine" ???

[Jake]

Im gonna get 3 made.. I prolly wont anodize them. I will let the caveat emptor on that one... but i recommend it.
Mostly Im just doing it so that we have the template to make more in the future.