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I had the ATI Super Damper for my 2004 Mini Cooper S JCW rebuilt six months ago because a failed belt and broken belt tensioner had trashed the belt surface of the damper. Since installing it I have still had what seems to be excess noise from the right side of the engine and on cold start it sometimes knocks and the tensioner appears to "Jump" with each knock.. I had a BMW mechanic listen to it and he questioned whether the damper is in the right location on the crankshaft because the belt is running toward the back of the idler pulley. The belt, belt tensioner, and idler pulley are all new, and the supercharger had been rebuilt shortly before I bought the Mini in December 2017 and has just 6000 driving miles on it since.
When I installed the Super Damper I warmed it to 190 degrees F in a double boiler and torqued the new bolt to 85 foot pounds. Is there a measurement from the damper edge to some point on the engine that I can check to make sure the Super Damper is correctly installed?
On mine the back side of the damper seems to line up perfectly with the top of the bolt on the timing chain cover. If your belt is running on the inside of the idler pulley then I would expect to see the damper sitting closer to the timing chain cover.
Also, thanks for motivating me to crawl under the car, I just realized my TCC gasket is leaking again.
OK, Thanks for the photo. Looks like if mine was too far back it would be rubbing on that bolt. I'll check it as soon as the rain here stops. Thanks again
On mine the back side of the damper seems to line up perfectly with the top of the bolt on the timing chain cover. If your belt is running on the inside of the idler pulley then I would expect to see the damper sitting closer to the timing chain cover.
Also, thanks for motivating me to crawl under the car, I just realized my TCC gasket is leaking again.
I finally had the time and opportunity to run my Mini up on ramps to photograph the damper and timing cover bolt. I had to shoot through a slot in the skid pan at a different timing cover bolt than in the reference photo, but I assume the bolts will all be at a similar depth. My damper seems to be set toward the engine slightly past the head of the timing cover bolt VS your reference photo being slightly outboard of a timing cover bolt. I am not sure why the difference in our ATI Super Dampers since there was no discussion of any shims in the installation but just making sure it was all the way on the crank. Here is a comparison photo of mine VS yours.
