Pulley alignment woes with Vortech setup.

[gcomfx.com]

Took the car on it's first trip down the road in 6 months. Surprisingly it fired right up. Only got it to idle once. Usually it surges from 800 to 1,800. LOL Sounds wicked though. I'm just glad I have a big stall or it would be trying to spin the tires at every traffic light.

The test drive was short lived. My tensioner is shot. I just picked up a new one. Freakin' $50 MY cost at O'Reilly. Ugh. But I guess the last one made it 200,000 miles.

I still have to work on the smog delete spacers. It's still a bit crooked, but it was working. If it would stop raining I could actually try to datalog the damn car. Our club track rental is Saturday and I would like to let the car eat. Not sure it's going to happen.

Oh, not that I had too.... but I ended up moving the box on the overflow bracket. It was just taking up space. It's now on the rail where the air filter use to be. I cut the bracket so it only holds the overflow bottle. I may end up getting a different overflow container to put where my battery used to be. Thought it might be funny to build an overflow out of a battery casing. LOL

 

[ProKiller]

very cool man. glad its coming together and you could get it out for drive. the stock overflow is mounted on the pass side frame rail? how'd you do that? pics?

 

[gcomfx.com]

The overflow tank is still in the stock location for now. (until I put another container where the battery used to be).

I cut the bracket off past the tank and relocated the big box sensor thingamijig to the passenger side wall frame. ;-)

 

[ProKiller]

oooooh i gotcha now, you relocated the CCRM. yeah i did that too and cut off the bracket.

 

[gcomfx.com]

Yeah.... and what's the CCRM do? LOL

Update:

Fixed the pulley alignment with the smog delete and faulty tensioner tonight. Weird thing. The new tensioner looks to be the same dimensions in every way to the stock one. Even the pulley is the same size. It just doesn't seem to open as far as the stock one. IE my belt didn't fit. Not even with a heat gun. UGH. So I bought one size longer. Put a larger idler pulley on. It looked okay. After a test drive.... it's about to rub again. SOOOOO.... I've got the slightly shorter belt hanging in the garage with a jack stand on the bottom to help stretch it out. I'll try again tomorrow night.

On the test drive, it had JUST stopped raining. So the streets were soaked. During my turn around at the High School traffic light. My car was surging pretty bad. Each surge slide the back of my car over 6". Good thing there wasn't any other vehicles out.

This trip, the check engine light came on. I pulled a 173 and 177 = HEGO sensor fault/RICH

The wide band showed it was pig rich the whole time. 10.3 to 11.0 - even coasting it rarely hit 12.5. Funny, I didn't expect the computer to OVER correct for the extra air flow.

So, left on the list is a shorter serpentine belt, get a new tune from Don, reburn my chip, and watch my supercharger belt turn into a 7 rib belt as it slightly rubs the water pump pulley. Hopefully I can file down the hub on the waterpump later to get it to move in another sixteenth of an inch.

 

[ProKiller]

i can't believe your having that much trouble with the belt alignment. do you have any pictures?

 

[Dan95-5.0]

ya, i cant beleive all the pulley problems. are you running a underdrive water pump pulley?

did you get a pretune before the blower install to be safe? better rich then too lean

 

[gcomfx.com]

The car now starts and idles better than it ever has since the 331. I drove it to our track rental, but didn't get to run the car. Once I start hitting boost the elbow starts leaking air and leans the car out. I finally broke down and ordered the Vortech elbow and picked up new couplers and T-bolt clamps from work.

Here's what it looked this past w/e:

 

[ProKiller]

that is a sweet looking engine bay Paul!

just need to get a AFM power pipe now and ditch that dryer vent tubing

 

[gcomfx.com]

Thanks... it's not near to the caliber of some on here.

We're closing on a house with a shop building in a few weeks. Money is going towards that first. I hope to have a lift in the shop by spring.

I still haven't bought tires for my new wheels.... I'm running on the old stocker marshmellows right now. LOL

 

[ProKiller]

i hear that problem. i just bought mickey thompson et streets for my also new fr500s

 

[HGFireHazard]

Believe the tensioner problems guys, it happened to me too. I went to replace my factory tensioner with one from Autzone, and I also noticed that it didn't open up as far as my stock one did. I just couldn't find the right belt size, too short and I couldn't get it on the tensioner, too long and it stretched out and contacted the belt.

I ended up keeping my stock tensioner and changing the size of the idler pulley. I can't remember the size of the belt I'm using so I can't help there... but the whole process was a big pain in the butt.

If you can find a replacement stock tensioner it would be your best bet, otherwise let us know how you resolve the issue.

 

[gcomfx.com]

So far so good with the belts. I drove the car all w/e and while it did stretch some (after I stretched it before installing it)... the belt started out so tight, I would be very impressed if it could possible stretch any further. LOL

Still waiting on the correct air inlet piece from Vortech to show up.

 

[BlownFiveLiter]

That thing still hasn't arrived? Call up superchargersonline and talk to, I believe his name is Brian. He'll take care of ya.

 

[gcomfx.com]

I would if I wanted to pay $18 shipping, plus an additional $10 for the same part. LOL

 

[gcomfx.com]

Ugh...

Vortech said they've never seen this particular bolt break before.

 

[Dan95-5.0]

noooooooooooo.................

how did that happen? while running or working on it?

some more down time i guesse. sorry about the bad news

what are your plans to remove it?

 

[ProKiller]

holy crap dude! you got the install from hell!

i've had my bracket pivot bottle strip out on me but never actually break the pulley bolt. are they going to do anything for you?

 

[gcomfx.com]

Double post...

 

[gcomfx.com]

They are sending me a new retaining bolt kit. I had just bought the kit from them a week or two ago. I'm guessing the metal in the bolt was bad. It has different colors in it and it kinda chunked as I drilled it.

I had the bolt out in 20 minutes or so. I couldn't get an easy out to start, so I kept binding up a reversed drill bit to get it to spin out. I did eventually break the end of the bit off, but the bolt came out. LOL

Because of the holiday w/e.... I won't get the new retainer kit for a week. We are in the middle of trying to move too. Ugh. I may have to drive the car the 25 minutes without the blower belt on... or try and make a retainer. I have the specs on the bolt, but not the retainer. If I have time, I might try to make one and guess on it's thickness.

I drove the car 2 hours without the bolt in it. I noticed there was a new vibration, enough of one I thought the bearings were going out in the supercharger. So I guess this is BETTER news than that would have been.