Belt chirping / pulley wobble
 

Update: After all this nonesense, it ended up being a belt alignment issue. A shop found the issue and milled down the main blower pulley and another pulley on the main bracket. After that, things were fixed 100 percent. Having a good laser alignment tool is key. I used the Gates one and I think it has the capability to be good, but be warned it does not come aligned out of the box and the included alignment parts are a joke, for any sort of real accurate data.

I posted this up in my "build thread", but I'm looking for some insight and thought this might gather more views.

A&A, 8 rib direct/secondary drive setup, V2 TI. New kit, new install.

Drove the car around 3 hours total, after which it suddenly started belt chirp on a cold startup. Noted belt dust around blower. Blower pulley has black mark on side towards engine and rib closest to engine. Bought laser alignment tool, suspected crooked main bracket due to non OEM water pump.

Aligned tool, alignment on blower side more or less checks out.... checked the secondary drive side and alternator is spot on, PS pulley is off by a hair but hasn't caused any issues yet and it's a different belt.... more just wanted to verify the laser tool more than anything.

Only thing weird I can find is the blower pulley appears to have a wobble. If I spin the pulley as a hold the laser stationary pointed at the crank, it walks around a bit. I tried this over 10 times and the other side of the pulley etc and it's repeatable every single time. Laser spot wanders left/right 1/4-1/3 a rib maybe? Doesn't seem like a ton, but maybe it gets worse with belt tension.

I contacted A&A, but it's the weekend and figured I would see what I could gather from the interwebs.

Anyone else ever seen this or looked for play at the blower pulley itself?

Thanks for any info/comments/thoughts. It's frustrating being so close yet so far to having this install 'done'.

The pics show the laser pattern with the blower pulley rotated ~180* apart... best vs worst case.

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how can you hold the laser stationary on the blower pulley while turning it?... just curious but I'm not sure if I would trust that reading because any small movement will change the position of the laser and the farther away you are aiming the worse that reading will get... have you shot from the crank to blower and then rotate the blower pulley?... that might be a more accurate reading in my opinion, you will probably have to remove the ribbed idler in order to do it this way though

I mean initially I just rotated the pulley 45 degrees....check laser.....45 more degrees etc. That's when I noticed the laser spot wasn't consistent. I was skeptical that the tool just wasn't being consistent, but I got it down to where it was consistent. I just later figured out I could hold the laser in place steady while i slowly rotated the pulley under it and it showed the same thing, just in a nice smooth motion fashion.

I didn't shoot from the crank as that looked like I would have to pull a good bit of stuff off.... didn't want to go there yet if I didn't have to.

But I think my test is valid-- as the supercharger pulley spins, the angle/axis that it is on is changing. If the main bracket was cocked but pulley was true then the laser spot on the crank pulley should be off, and even if the laser tool was off, it would still be a consistent spot.

I did start the car up with the belt off and shined the laser on the crank... I'm confidence the crank isn't wobbly or something weird going on there. It lit up a peak and didn't budge while running.

Random thought I had was maybe I tightened the manual tensioner too much or something, so I put a new belt on and didn't get it as tight and let the autotensioner take up a bit more slack. Started it up and no noise etc....but that's how it all began the first time anyways.

Drove around and did some logging, 30-45 mins and did a few WOT runs to 5500 rpm, ~9psi. No noise.

There's already some belt dust accumulating right around the blower pulley. You can see some wear on the outer edge of the belt already too. I have a feeling it will start chirping here before long, I'll try to gather more useful data as I go this time.

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Took a video, stabilized it and slowed it down. Looks like a wobble of some sort, what do you guys think?

can't see the video... well hmm, I don't think it could be the waterpump or bracket since that seems like it would be a constant out of alignment issue and not a wobble like you are explaining... maybe it's isolated to the blower pulley or blower hub... is there any kind of spacer behind the blower pulley?... I wonder if the pulley isn't machined perfectly flat, just throwing out ideas

All good ideas thanks. I feel like the likelihood of the issue being with the blower itself is pretty low, but that video sure makes it look like the pulley and shaft are wobbling.

Stuff you mention is def worth checking out.

I'll try the link without https and see if you can see it then or copy/paste at least

youtube.com/watch?v=7BDNqxEwTvk

Bent shaft? Wobble is pretty noticeable in that video.

Have you tried a different pulley?

To my eyes it looks like both the pulley and shaft are moving about.

I want to talk to A&A or vortech about it first, but trying a different pulley first, making sure spacer isn't jacked up like Neutron mentioned is common sense first step I think. And would be easy to take another laser measurement/another video and compare.

I was thinking about a smaller 3.47" pulley and I'm not even tuned yet............. lol

Some good and some bad.

I think my laser alignment tool was slightly off (even with my best efforts to calibrate it the best I could), which maybe misled me a little bit. I ended up using one of the main bracket spacers as a "feeler gauge" between the head and main bracket.

Sure enough, the bottom of the bracket was a little bit further away from the head and almost certainly the culprit was my water pump and the mounting ears being ever so slightly off.

I followed the laser alignment sticky regarding the procedure to grind down the 2 mounting brackets slowly and get it square.

Did that tedious process and I have not heard a belt chirp since. No belt dust messes, or weird wear on the belt or on the SC pulley itself etc.

I thought I was home free until I really opened it today with multiple redline pulls on the street. Held boost great, logs looked good, thought I was still in the clear.

Looked at the main belt and there's at least two sections of several inches of outer rib missing.

I don't see any significant belt dust up by the blower pulley or around the water pump where I did some clearancing.... MAYBE a bit below that there is some extra dust. It's so hard to see with everything together.

I'm thinking maybe it is hitting something or something on the engine under boost at very high rpm? Maybe as the belt stretches and tensioner moves it then hits something?

I need to hit the dyno soon... I'm planning on putting on a new belt and have a guy look with a flashlight during some pulls and go from there.

Never ending belt issues.......... it's starting to get very old. Just figured I would share and continue to update the progress....open to any ideas as always.

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Did you ever figure out what the issue was?

Last i heard from him he was in the state mental institution. It drove him nuts trying to figure this out.

I was having the same problem a while back,one thing you may want to check is along the rack bar theres a couple of hard plastic grommets holding down the wires for the anti lock brakes, on WOT the belt may just touch the grommet enough to strip it a bit on the edge as it was doing on my vet,drove me crazy but a soon as i fix it, the problem went away.

lol pretty much accurate.

It's actually at shop right now to get it fixed. Long wait period but I was done messing with it.

Most signs point toward an actual alignment issue- probably the water pump mounting bracket causing the main bracket to be cocked slightly.

I got a new OEM water pump so that should be fine, but it's still off....not OEM block so thats another unknown. Next logical step would be to grind down the mounting ears on the water pump or try a thinner WP gasket etc but I as I said before I got tired of messin with it.

All that said it could be something else. I will update the thread when I get it sorted.

:steering:

Still LMAO.:willy:

I don't know if I missed your update but what was the verdict?

How dare you bump this, bringing back the PTSD lol.

I ended up taking it to a local shop that is well versed in domestics / A&A kits.

They used a laser alignment tool and got it fixed. After they fixed it, zero belt wear or dust or any sort of issues. They ended up milling down the main blower pulley slightly and another pulley that was part of the main blower bracket. It's hard to say if something was off as shipped from A&A or if it something related to my engine setup. It's a non Original LS1 block, heads slightly milled etc...maybe just enough to throw stuff off... impossible to say. Based on the labor they charged me it took them quite a while to sort it all out, but what they did fixed it 100 percent..... alignment issue 100 percent. I also had the shop do some street driving and pulls on their dyno to confirm it wasn't going to start shredding again after a few pulls.

That's awesome. I here you about the money but after all the BSing you went through i bet it's worth it to drive without that issue. I went through that same issue. My neighbor kwen what i was going through with my situation with belt alignment and pulling my hair out. He saw me go into my garage with a gas can ready to burn my car to the ground and all the tools with it , but he stopped me and i'm not kidding that's how frustrated i was. Glad you got it all sorted out.

Yep I was at the same point. With the street driving, dyno time etc it came out to about $1000. Honestly it was well worth it at that point vs my own sanity.

I'm also really picky about shops and others working on the car etc. (a lot of bad experiences) and I found a good shop in the process, so it was all good.