I was talking to my local Mini dealer, Northwest Mini. The service guy was filling me in about the JCW system. He said they will be cutting the pulley off, rather than using a puller. Has anyone else heard of doing the removal that way, or could he have been mistaken?

John

 

I thought the JCW system used a new supercharger, that would leave the old pulley on the old supercharger. I am in the dark though.

 

you are right, the JCW system includes a new supercharger. The charger differs from stock, as does the pulley, and my understanding is that the JCW pulley is LESS of an UNDERSIZE than the aftermarket pulley that can be swapped. For the aftermarket one you need a puller. If you cut it off you need lots of superglue, and then your rpm is limited to about 10

 

Well I know of at least one person that's installed his supercharger pulley and had the original cut off. I'll get some more details for you. But you may want to drop a PM to MCSHP (Bryan) who is the party in question I know about.

So no, it's not totally bizzared, but all the same I'd rather use a puller myself.

R

 

yes, it would be useful to get more info.
As far as I know, the pulley is shrunk-fit onto the charger axle, and likewise, one way to get it off (with a puller), is to heat the pulley and then apply to puller. Some have expressed concern that the heating of the pulley invariably transfers some heat to the axle and thus charger, and might damage the charger.
I suppose you could cut through the pulley with high speed cutting wheel. This would have to be a radial cut along the axle. The tricky thing then is to do that without cutting into the axle.

 

Yeah if you are carefull I don't see any reason to not cut it off except that you destroy the old one.

I don't understand why the dealer needs to cut it off if they are replacing the charger???

 

if you fu the shaft the blower is junk, plus any radial cut would have trouble not interfering with the blower housing. I cut steel all the time with a variety of abrasive discs, but i wouldn't risk doing it to the pulley. My solution was to make a puller attachment; so far, I have made 10 of them, sent to various installers.

 

I agree with jlm - you couldn't use a cut-off wheel, the pulley is just to close to the supercharger housing.

As far as the new JCW kit - I still have yet to see evidence that the pulley isn't the "new" part of the supercharger. The JCW website states that the supercharger has new gearing - that would indicate to me a pulley. The pics also show what seem to be a 15% reduction on the pulley size, but it is of course tough to tell from the photos. This would explain why the dealer would be just removing the old pulley and keeping your supercharger.

John, any chance I could get a few more of those pullers??? It would be nice to be able to loan them out with the pulley and have them sent back. Right now, because I only have the one, I'm charging a fortune in core charges to make sure I get it back.

 

>>you are right, the JCW system includes a new supercharger. The charger differs from stock, as does the pulley, and my understanding is that the JCW pulley is LESS of an UNDERSIZE than the aftermarket pulley that can be swapped.>>>>>>>

No, no, no. Someone wrote it has a new supercharger but that person didn't know what they were talking about! :smile: