Installed a 15% pulley yesterday. Wow! What a difference!

Some notes from my install:

1. If you don't have the tensioner tool and you're trying to do a work-around, you can save yourself considerable bloodshed (and potentially a finger or two, that tensioner's a stiff sob) by putting a small bolt into one of the holes in the end of the tensioner arm and prying against that using a 16mm (or 5/8") deepwell socket on the top tensioner bolt as a fulcrum. A prybar and a big cheater make it easy.

2. On my car (an 04) it was a real problem getting to the lower 10mm and 16mm mounting bolts on the tensioner. I found that because I was using the small one-piece pulley puller rather than the large square two-piece puller that I didn't need to remove the tensioner at all. Once I removed the belt I removed the 16mm top mounting bolt for the belt tensioner and was able to kind of horse the tensioner around toward the passenger side wheel, giving plenty of clearance for the pulley puller. Worked like a charm.

Total time was probably an hour and a half, much of it figuring out how to release the belt tensioner without losing a finger to it. Once it occurred to me to check if the holes in the far end of the belt tensioner went all the way through (two of them do) it was obvious that the right sized bolt would go through and be stable enough to pry on while my fingers were in jeopardy.

The pulley, as everyone who has installed one said, made an incredible differenc. I used to like the supercharger whine. Now I LOVE the supercharger scream!

 

My only problem with this is that you are a DIY type ( me too ) who tried to share some insite from learned experience in Performance Mods forum.
Now what will happen to this information. It will in A short time be lost/buried to others ( DIY types ) as it scrolls off the page behind alot of stuff/fluff that has been gone over&over, as one moderator said it's well worn ground but he was referring to something else.
I think it's a shame to lose good info.

 

Be sure to give your ECU time to power down (5 min. plus) before unplugging it. I didn't know it when I did mine, but the ECU retains power for a few minutes after the battery is disconnected, and may become confused if unplugged in this state. I lost my A/C temporarily after my install & attribute the problem to this.
Bodinski

 

Good point. You should really post this in the Beneath the Bonnet section.

 

Great stuff here! I'm a newbie, but bought some stuff from a little shop here in town that was going out of the Mini business... they had the 15% supercharger pulley from Mini Mania, so I was thinking of installing.

Thanks for the help!

Casey