Hello all. I'm hoping you guys can help me out on this one. A little background, I have a 2004 MCS with the mod listed on my signature. The car runs great and is pretty strong. I would have never noticed the problem I will describe shortly if the dealer hadn't pointed it out. OK, here we go:
1. I bought the car used with around 16K miles on it. Shortly after getting it I had a local shop install an ALTA 15% pulley and a lightweight crank pulley. The car has run great since- much stronger...no issues.
2. Since I have owned the car (before and after the pulley) the AC (what I think is the AC) has made a chirping sound from time to time. I took it in to the dealer to see if they could fix it. The first time they said they installed some sort of weather-strip and that was supposed to fix it- it did not. Car still running great (besides the slight chirp).
3. I had the same shop install the ALTA exhaust shortly before I went on a trip to Dallas. Car runs great, strong, etc. While in Dallas the car made a stronger chirping sound, more pronounced two or three times during the trip- I figured that the AC was just getting worse.
4. I took the car in for the perceived AC noise for the second time. Drop it off at the dealer and they call a few hours later. The service guy says that the serpentine belt (SB) is "all shredded" and needs to be replaced for $122. Hmmmm. Well, I told him to go ahead and do it just to be on the safe side. I go to pick it up and ask to see the belt, it is lightly shredded on the side facing the engine. You can just make out the nylon (?) threads that are past the first layer of the rubber belt- hope that makes sense. All off the groves were still very present and there was just a tiny bit taken off the one side of the belt. The dealer saw the pulleys so the expense was out of pocket. I asked the tech what could have caused the damaged and he mentioned that an improper install of the belt may have caused the problem. He said he checked out the pulleys and from what he could tell everything looked fine. Again, the car ran fine before and after the new pulley- no problems.
5. You can probably guess what is going to happen next....right? I won't keep you in suspense. I've been checking the belt about once a week or so just to make sure there aren't any problems/unusual wear. I was driving today and noticed the more pronounced chirp. I got home and checked the inside "side" of the SB belt where it had the slight wearing before and guess what- it is doing it again. I can see what looks like the ends of some frayed cords on the SB belt- same location as the last time. Again it is wearing on the side that is facing the engine (versus the side that is facing towards the passenger headlight) if that makes sense???
6. I'm not sure what course of action to take here. I know that the dealer isn't going to do anything and I know that I can't afford to change the SB every few months. Any ideas? Is the wear on the SB normal or is something out of whack? Should I contact ALTA and/or the shop that put the pulleys on?
7. Any suggestions you guys have would be much appreciated. I can take a few pics and post them if it would help. Again, the car is running great and if I didn't look at the belt I wouldn't know that there was anything wrong. I look forward to hearing back from ya'll, thanks again.

 

After reviewing this post, surely this must win an award for the longest post ever.....maybe???

 

With the CAI, you might be hearing the throttle body chirp. It can be fairly pronounced, It happens usually under light load and would usually only be audible at lower speeds due to the other noises such as road noise and wind noise being deminished. It does sound, however, that you might have a pulley problem if you are seeing this kind of wear on the belt. I'd take it to the shop that did the install.

 

Thanks vegasdan- I will be taking it in this coming week. Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

My guess is that the Alta crank pulley is not properly seated. It it's off by just 1/16" it would cause chaffing on the inner edge of the bolt. The other options are that the 15% pulley is not seated right OR the tensioner got shifted somehow and is riding a bit crooked. Maybe one of the bolts is tweaked a bit?? I would go to the shop that did the pulleys and talk them into taking down the system to re-seat all the pulleys and tensioner. It's clearly one of the things. I can't think of anything else that could be causing this sort of belt issues...

best,

 

A bit off the subject here, but still relevant - I think it would be a very good idea for one of the aftermarket manufacturers to come out with a supercharger pulley that LOOKS stock, but in actuality is smaller. Fool the dealers. My belt tensioner is leaking and they won't fix it, saying it has to do with the pulley.

Riiight.

 

I would agree. Something is causing the belt to get munched and the likely candidate is either the Alta pulley or the belt tensioner (or both). If you get the belt problem resolved, you may notice that the chirping noise gets resolved as well. I doubt the chirping is due to a problem with the a/c - afterall, the JCW kit uses a 14.8% reduction pulley and there are no a/c chirping problems with a properly installed JCW kit.

 

In order to make it look like the stock pulley, it would need to be the press on kind. With the press on pulleys, you have to remove the supercharger, heat up the shaft, and watch your seals go bye-bye. I guess a close to stock pulley could be done, but where would you hide the bolts?

 

Alignment of the reduction SC pulley, the larger crank pulley, the belt, or belt tensioner are critical.

With 19% pulley and smaller NAPA (035) belt, I removed the belt at one year/12,000 miles (mixed street, autocross, driving school) and the wear was very minimal- the belt had stretched a bit and fit looser. Performance was fine.

A new belt tensioner kit will arrive hopefully this year- stay tuned. Helix13 will announce it when finished but it isn't ready yet.

SC reduction pulleys are not likely to look very much like a stock pulley.
The size of the pulley itself is greatly reduced (your 4 year old child can tell the difference easily. Then you need allen key bolts to fasten the two pieces together usually 4 or 6 of them and that isn't on the stock pulley ( your 3 year old child can look for bolts). Finally the stock pulley is in basic black and looks rather plain while upgrades are meant to look ... well, like upgrades ( your cat or dog will be able to tell the difference... by smell of course- since upgrades smell new (hence better). Hey, a "sniffing dog- pulley upgrade detecting device". Oh oh, better hide that thought from the MINI police (your spouse).

 

Uh, I think it is the other way around - heat up the pulley (so that the pulley can be slipped onto the supercharger shaft). Randy Webb (Webb Motorsports) had an earlier pulley install DIY guide where the pulley was heated to around 450 degrees F prior to installation. The Alta (and other) pulley uses bolts to mount the pulley to the s/c shaft - avoiding the need to heat the pulley.

 

caminifan,
Thanks for your help. The AC chirping noise was present in the car long before either of the pulleys were installed and before the belt went bad. It seems to have something to do with the AC. I will take it back to the dealer once I get the belt issue taken care of.

Thanks again for all the replies. I had initially thought it might be the SC shaft as the shop really had a hard time getting the factory pulley off the SC. It sounds like it may be a simple retorquing of the bolts and a possible reinstall of the crank pulley. If that is the case it looks like folks are heating up the crank pulley and getting them on that way. The shop also had a heck of a time getting the crank pulley on. I'll keep you guys updated.

 

Whatever, you heat something, causing problems with the seals in the supercharger.

 

Ooopss, just re-read your post above about the chirping being found in the AC. So feel free to ignor the below

The problem is with the lightweight crank pulley and not the IC pulley. The chirping you are hearing is the crank shaft spinning inside the pulley, usually happens at start up or when it’s cold the first few times and then will do it more often as the aluminum pulley gets worn by the slipping.

Check the pulley center bolt and see if it is loose. I might bet that it's finger loose at this point. This is due to either poor installation being that the pulley was never torqued in all the way when it was HOT, or incorrect torquing of the bolt

The inner wear on the belt is due to this pulley pulling away from the block and is wearing at the belt.

I would almost guarantee the dealer never checked the torque of that pulley bolt.

 

onasled,
WOW- good info. I'll pass this on to the shop that did the install. Thanks!

 

Did you have it installed by Terry Sayther in Austin or some place in San Antonio? I was thinking about taking mine to Terry Sayther in Austin for an Alta pulley if they ever get the SES problems with the MCSa figured out.

 

It was a place here in San Antonio, not Austin.

 

First off, i don't actually "own" a mini.. one will be coming soon, i swear. But I feel somewhat qualified to answer....
My fiance's Dodge Stratus absolutely QUIT once about a year ago when I was looking under the hood to scout out a squeal. The car died when I closed the hood. Turns out the AC compressor pulley was failing and finally siezed up. That's kind of a prolonged chirp. Maybe your AC comp is failing, causing the belt to occasionally slip and giving it odd wear...
Just a thought....

 

jbsf3: Just would like to clear things up in my mind. You stated it is an Alta SC pulley but you didn't specifically say the lightened Crank Pulley was an Alta product. Is it an Alta Crank Pulley and if so, is it stock dia. or an overdrive pulley

 

Both are ALTA pulleys- the crank pulley is stock diameter, not reduced.

 

I was shredding belts on my 2003 MCS. The inner half of the belt would wear away. Dealer blamed the Alta Pulley, but replaced the tensioner. I had Randy check it out at one of the Pulley Parties in Florida. He couldn't find anything wrong, but I had him replace the Alta pulley anyway. One of guys waiting for his car to be worked on was studing the old pulley and found a small area that had a slight grinder swirl on the belt contact area. It really didn't look like much, but it turns out this was wearing the belt away. I have had no problems since the new pulley install.

 

It just goes to show that not all pulleys are created equal - some are better machined than others. Having said this, some will focus on the install but I go back to the pulley design (not only how it receives the belt but how it connects to the shaft - and lines up).

Bahamabart

 

Does the chirp happen during a pull from stop in 1st and reverse? I had this and the dealer replaced the clutch, no more problems. The noise was like a chirp but maybe a little closer to a squeal.

 

jbsf3,
Sorry it took us while to respond.
Couple of things here before we go to far. We pride our selves in the quality of our SC pulley and in the thousands we have sold, we have only gotten back around 8 pulleys. As a percentage that is very low. 2 of which were descibed as chewing up the belt,(Like LakeHelen was describing), this had NOTHING to do with machining, this had everything to do with shipping damage or installation damage. The few others were supposed mis-bored hubs, which turned out to be pre-compressed fingers which made the hub not slide all the way onto the pulley. This is due to someone bolting the together with out the shaft inside of it(or dropping it on its face with the hub installed) With that said, we are not going to hide problems with our pulleys, because we feel this percent of bad parts is very very good, and we don't think anyone esle can say their % of bad parts is better than ours.

We have had one person contact us(don't think it was you) that was having the pulley, (or something) shredding the inside belt. We went through 2 pulleys with him and talking with the installer we found our parts(yes both we sent to them) was made correcty, but the SC shaft was somehow pulled out of the SC housing. Since our SC pulley uses the end of the SC shaft to locate itself, this cause the pulley to sit too far away from the SC. A few good smacks on the SC shaft and they were back in buisiness.

What i am getting at is this could be your problem. It could either be one or all of 3 things.
1. SC pulley is installed correct, but SC shaft was pulled out due to not using a puller to remove, but a prying method.(you woud see some marks on the nose of the SC housing)
2. SC pulley isn't installed correctly, and hub needs to be loosened from outer hub and SC shaft, tapped on (gentaly) then re-tighted.
3. Crank pulley isn't pressed on all the way and it needs to be retorqued.

There are many other things that could be wrong, like Bad AC idler(but the dealers are always correct in how they diagnose things, right?) or bad tensioner, but they don't have anything to do with the installation of the pulleys. Which is seems was when you noticed the wearing.

The last thing i would check(this isn't easy) is to remove the pulley and make sure the plastic cap that goes on the end of the SC shaft was removed. This cap is about .050" thick and would cause this problem. These are always removed if the correct SC pulley puller is used.

Our part could surely be at fault, even though we try hard, we can't guarratee 100% of them will be good. If you have the part off the car, and you give us some of the measurements we can tell you right away if it is good. Just to make sure, it does have our logo on it right?

Again sorry for the delayed respones, look forward to talking to you soon.

 

Thanks ALTA- I'll keep you guys updated after my appointment on Friday. The pulley DOES have the ALTA name on it, on both of them actually.

 

My post was a general comment and not intended to be a dig on Alta.

I found your post refreshing and reflects product tracking. To often all we hear about is how ones product is the best thing since sliced bread. As we know its not just a matter of product design but manufacturing as well. Even the best manufacturing can produce a variance. So its good to read that Alta recognizes that even with the greatest of care there can exist the occasional flaw. Again I am not saying that in this post that was the cause but the acknowledgement that it could be - opens the door to true discovery of the problem and speaks highly of Alta.

It has become evident to me that I need to pay more attention to the Alta product line.

BahamaBart

PS - Nothing like a professional post that spoke to my post without the flame thrower.