Ok... I dont want to start the whole "a lightweight crank pulley is bad for your engine, you'll blow it up" argument, but I have a few questions. If you have a lightweight crank pully on your R53 please chime in.

1. How long have you had the pulley on your car?
2. How do you like it? Do you feel like it made a big difference in power? (If you have a pre/ post dyno chart, that would be great!)
3. Any issues with the car since you put the pulley on?

Thanks guys. Again, please dont start the arguing about wether this is a bad or good modification. I just want to see how those who have a lightweight crank pulley like it.

 

I have one on my sons car I just bought... A friend of mine used to own it and installed the -2% on it about a year and a half ago. it hasn't caused ANY issues at all. At this point when mine goes out I'll be putting one on MY R53

 

Who manufactured the pulley on your car? How many miles have you had the car? Thanks!

 

I put one on my car a few weeks ago. My 2003 has about 63k on it. Its a +2% Alta which is then driving a +15% SC pulley. It was a full 6lbs lighter than the stocker. My old pulley wasn't in bad shape at all but wanted to replace it before it had a chance to fail. First thing I noticed is my idle was MUCH smoother. After replacing the upper rear motor mount with a new powerflex reinforced one I was getting a lot of vibration at idle. It was especially bad with the AC on. After the pulley install it was back to stock or maybe even better. The low end take off was also slightly better. I attribute this from the 6lb loss of mass and the slightly faster spinning SC.

As far as it grenading the motor I did a lot of searching before buying mine. I couldn't find one post from a private member who had a motor fail from a pulley. All I found was a few vague posts from vendors who do mini repairs. They do see a lot more cars come through their shops. It's reasonable to expect they'll see more failures first hand. The other side of that coin is most of these vendors sell much more expensive dampened pulleys. It would be in their interest to sell you a more expensive pulley. I'm not saying that is what is happening but it is something to keep in mind.

 

I have the 0% alta light weight pulley. Had it on my car for about 3k miles. Really like it. Like banzairx7 said, its ~6lbs lighter so much quicker when you step on the gas. I dont believe it is a power change, it is more of a response change. Much quicker. I would suggest getting one. If you going with a smaller pulley be sure to get the 0% pulley. the 2% adds more boost to your car (due to it is over spinning the supercharge pulley more) read up on it a bit more to see what you want, but i feel it is a nice purchase to get.

 

Nice! Thanks guys, keep it coming. Banzairx7 I know what you mean about not being able to find any first had accounts of people blowing up and engine from one of these. Ive searched all of the major forums and cant find anything. Thats why I started this thread, to hear from those that actually have one on their car.

 

I believe the worst thing that i have heard happening is just some vibration. Because if you go with one of the lighter pulleys like Alta's, it really isnt a harmonic balancer anymore. so some vibration can occur, but the pulley is great in my eyes

 

Mine is a CravenSpeed +2%. the car is hitting 119K miles. I don't know how many were with the new pulley.

 

119 k miles! That's impressive!

 

Read and decide yourself

http://www.atiracing.com/products/da...mper_dinan.htm

 

Yeah, I've read that article before. Conveniently, it is written by someone close to ATI. One of the only manufacturers, of aftermarket "harmonic dampeners" for the Mini.

 

Conveniently or not Steve Dinan knows his stuff. People are going to do what they want irregardless. I personally just think harmonic dampers are there for a reason. I would not mind hearing what some of the trusted mechanics that frequent these forums like Way, RMW etc. have to say about dampers / power pulleys.

 

I would love to hear from them as well. It just seems to me that in the 10 years that the R53 has been on the market and with so many people modding them that if these power pulleys were so terrible that we would have heard many first hand accounts of catastrophic failure by now. Not saying its not true, just wondering why we havent seen accounts of catastrophic failure on the forums (or anywhere for that matter).

 

I can testify that I've done 4 engines on cars that had lightweight crank pulleys. Was that the reason we replaced the engines? Only one of them had a rod knock, so if any of them were caused by the pulley that would have been it. 2 of them were overheated, and the other had cracked rings.
But the two things common to all of them were the lightweight crank pulley and when I looked at the rod and main bearings they all had 10 times the normal wear and scored badly. I believe this was due to the crank pulley.

I do not recommend them, spend the extra and get the ATI.

 

I'm kinda mixed on this! I plan on getting the ATI for my Mini, but I've runned my '05 Sunfire (2.2 Ecotec) for 90 000km with a lighweight pulley (a crap load of 1/4 miles races during that mileage) and never had any problems!

 

Thanks for the input Way. Good to hear from someone who has seen the inside of a few engines with pulleys on them. Interesting to hear the bearings were scored.

 

I have no doubt that he knows his stuff, but he quotes fatigue limit as a failure point for engine components and uses a paper clip as his example. Aluminum DOES not have a fatigue limit, where below a certain force, elastic deformation will occur. Steel however, does. If the force applied is less than the fatigue limit, the part will (essentially) always return to its original shape. No matter how small the force applied to aluminum, the material will weaken over time.

I doubt the crank and rods in the mini are made of aluminum.

 

Great topic, something I've wondered as well but have had little info found. While the point was made that the article was written by someone close to ATI who makes the only dampener for mini, the article was written talking about BMWs. But thanks for the article, I have great respect for Dinan tuning and think I will stick to a harmonic dampener.

 

ATI is not the only one, another popular and less expensive choice is this
http://www.waymotorworks.com/fluid-c...ulley-r53.html

 

can anyone help me out? im in the middle of changing out my stock crank pulley with the ati super damper crank pulley. do i need to worry about the timing marks? the directions say nothing about them, so im not sure if thats just something im supposed to know, or if it doesnt matter. thanks in advance.

 

No need to worry about the marks. There is a keyway on the crank and the pulley only goes on in one place.

 

alright. thanks again. im also trying to figure out how to stop the stock pulley from spinning while removing the 15mm bolt if you know anything about that as well.

 

Electric impact gun. Makes this job(along with countless others) much, much easier. I only bought mine a few years back. I kick myself for not having one sooner.

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-elec...nch-68099.html