And for what? A couple of ball bearing assemblies and an anodized hub? If the stock part costs $35 or so, an improved aftermarket should be ~$100 or so?

Also, all the damage would have been avoided with a tensioner limiting device.....

Matt

 

I had occassion to correspond with someone named MICK at Cosworth several years ago, he quoted me $225 just for the idler pulley alone, too rich for my blood (or my peace of mind) My oem is about to roll on at 90K, with no problems.I did recently replace the alternator because of bearing failure(catostrophic, good one minute , gone the next) for anyone who cares, the dealer charged me $869 installed for this little deal.woof. Bend over and spread your cheeks. :impatient

 

I pointedly did not mention the price of the Cosworth pulley, and agree completely with the good Dr. that it seems wildly over priced; it's just the only other commercially available product to address this issue (that I know of). My point was: the fact that there are TWO replacement pulleys out there means there may infact be some value to the replacement proposition.

Quality for cost (relative value) is why I went with the GTT pieces, which at last summer's exchange rate were high but not absolutely, completely, totally insane. And I must say, the quality is really very good. As Matt points out, the tensioner limit stop bar is the ultimate insurance against total failure. That's also why I added the My MINI bar (considerably cheaper than the GTT equilivalent) when I upgraded the pulleys.

Yes, you could have your friendly local machinist run up some bitchin' cool pulleys. I looked into this, but in my situation to get the price down to par, I'd have had to commision a small batch run. Since I'm not interested in selling MINI parts, I passed on that option and ponied up for the GTT parts.

Stephan

 

I am going with this same setup.