Performance Pulleys

For those of you who've been considering this mod

Here is a little report from someone who had the experiance with the underdrive pulleys:

"I bought the March 1150s, three pulleys - crank, alt and water pump. I paid $127 delivered for the set. The kit reuses the stock crank pulley as a balancer - it mounts in front of the new pulley. March sells a kit that provides the balancer for about $200, if you don't like the idea of that extra pulley sticking out down there.

It took me about two hours to install. I needed to rent an impact wrench ($15) for the alt and crank bolts, and I bought a balancer puller ($10) for the crank pulley. The alt nut is about 15/16", or 23mm. The stock crank bolt is 18mm, the new one is 19mm. I suggest using a true hex socket on these, as opposed to the 12 point, to avoid rounding.

I got a great helpful hint from Keith (RamIt) about moving the radiator to gain access to the crank bolt. You remove the top mounting brackets for the rad, and just push it up about 10". Put the rad on blocks to keep it up. I suggest that you put a piece of cardboard between the AC condensor and the rad to protect them from rubbing. This saved a ton of time over removing the radiator. You'll definately have to do somethisng like this to get wrench on the crank bolt.

Other than the above, the instructions in the kit were very thorough.

After the install, I noticed a big improvement in the low end. I can spin the tires from a dead stop with no power brake, and chirp 2nd with automatic shift. This was on a dry concrete street. My accelleration from like 70-100 (kicking into paaccelerations dramatically improved as well. I'm very pleased because I lost about 1 1/2-2 mpg with the MAF mod; I feel like I've recovered most if not all of that with the pulleys.

I have noticed that the car does get a little bit warmer than it used to at times, like when I come into town on my way to work, and go from freeway speed to stop and go. It does cool back down pretty steady though. It used to creep up between N and O of "NORMAL," now it goes between O and R. It quickly cools back to about N, which is where I'm used to seeing it before the mod. The resolution for that is to put a low temperature thermostat (180' or 160'w/chip).

I have also noticed a difference on my charging gauge at idle. It is clearly not at full charge when I'm in gear at a dead stop. The spec on the pulleys is full charge at 950 rpm. Shifting into nuetral, or rolling about 5 mph gets me back to full charge. I also do this for the added cooling benefit at times like when I come off a few miles of freeway, and immediately come to a red light. Maybe I'm paranoid but it makes me feel better when the gauges look like I'm used to them looking! Taking my foot off the brake and just letting the car roll makes enough rpm difference to get back to nearly full charge. The underdrive of the alt is more severe (25%) than the water pump (8% I think), so I don't anticipate a problem.

I'm very happy with the pulley kit. The bang for the buck is excellent, installation was easy, and the side benefits like better fuel economy and reduced accesory wear are great. I would recommend this to anyone having concerns about negative impact on their car-DU."

Here is more INFO:
March pulleys
ASP pulleys
Pulleys installation

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