BlackC230Coupe

thanks, thats a good idea.

i just tried it, and the magnet sticked very quickly and strongly to the steel (silver part) and did not stick at all to the alluminum (black part) so i guess that answeres the question if it does have a steel sleeve.

Matt230K

Then why do they recommend such a low torque, and Kleemann says that the stock 225 lb.-ft. is fine? What is the difference between the two?

vadim

The steel sleeve is pressed on the (aluminum) pulley flange (in the back) that is attached to the crankshaft. The sleeve prevents the flange from getting deformed/cracked. There would be no point to press an aluminum ring onto an aluminum flange, as that would not make the latter any stronger against deformation.

However, the pulley bolt only comes in contact with the aluminum part in the front, plus the fact that aluminum is very mild - it gets deformed (crushed) very easily - that's why the setting torque is lower compared to the stock all-steel pulley.

Matt230K

Does this only apply to the ASP? I was told the higher torque setting is fine for Kleemann. This is what I did, and I have had no problems.

vadim

Honestly, I don't know if 220 ft*lbs is too much for an aluminum pulley, but I would trust ASP folks suggesting that the bolt should be torqued at ~90 ft*lbs. I wouldn't want to speculate as I can't perform comprehensive stress tests, and no trustworthy data is available on the subject.
Chances are, both settings fall within acceptable range for this material and, therefore, are fine. I guess - time will tell. So far, after ~2500 mi mine is fine - I have taken the airbox off a couple of times to assess the situation. No visible indications of things going wrong.

mdp c230k

The engines are balanced WITH the pulley on the crank. Internally balanced is a misnomer unless it is a straight 6 or has balance shafts. Fours, V6, V8, and V10 engines are not inherently balanced like the 6 or V12. It is not an oilpump issue, it is the crank bearings that suffer due to the increased stress from the crank flexing. As they are smashed they lose control of the oil pressure that lubes and protects the crank. Also, very short cranks like in motorcycle engines suffer less and lightweight rods and pistons are easier on the crank too. That said, racing bikes are not the same as a large displacement inline 4. There is a right way to do things and many other ways too. I choose the right way, others might not but thats their problem in the long run. You can paint a house without priming it first and it will be painted, but...you know the rest.

As for the 15k rpm engines, have you ever seen one with 100k miles on it? I don't think so. Sure it works for a race or two but not on a daily driver that is reved that high. What are you shooting for, are faster car for a long time or a really fast car for a month?

Lynn

Amen, brother mdp c230k.

Buellwinkle

Still, not one reported incidence of crankshaft damage on a SLK230, C230K sedan or C230K sportcoupe with any pulley of any kind from any manufaturer including Kleemann, who made solid alloy pulleys for the past 4 years for various motors including the 2.3L as well as 6 cylinder MBs, even straight 6's with longer crankshafts like in the C280.

IMHO, anything you do that alters the weight and balance of the factory pulley/damper may potentially cause crankshaft vibrations that may shorten bearing life. That's just speculation and hasn't actually happened in practice. If it did I would not have put any pulley on my car, but 7,000 miles and 7 months later it's still runs great, pulls hard.

BlackC230Coupe

buellwinkle what would you reccomend me toquring the pulley to?
80, 85, 90????

Lynn

Buell, while no one has experienced any problems, has any one torn down an engine with 50,000 or 100,000 miles to check the condition of the front main bearing? If I were keeping the car for two to four years, I wouldn't hesitate to put on a pulley, but I intend to have the car for a long time and high miles.

I don't think using the Kleemann ring, Renntech, Carlsson or Vaeth pulleys is the solution either. Adding that much weight to the pulley would change the characteristics of the balancer. A balancer with the wrong properties could be worse than no balancer at all. Does any one know if the Renntech, Carlsson or Vaeth pulleys are checked to make sure the still meet the factory specs for vibration dampening?

Buellwinkle

BlackC230Coupe, I have no idea what to torque it to. I just tightened it until I could tighten it no more without a torque wrench, checked it after 6K miles and all was well. If you don'g want to tighten is hard as I did then throw some blue loctite on there so the bolt doesn't back out.


Lynn, I agree, any mod that increases the blower output or HP output of the motor is not good for engine life. Heck, even someone that would do that is likely rough on their car (like me) so it's not what one would do if they keep their car over 5 years. For me 100K miles is out of the question, I would not keep a car that long, it doesn't make financial sense when you look at the what it costs to repair these finicky cars. I like to sell cars when they have about 65K miles, people feel comfortable with a used car with that mileage and can usually get top dollar. For example, take a 5 year old C230 with 65K miles which Kelly Blue Book shows at 21K, not too shabby since the car was had for about 28K back then, Now look at an 1995 (same prorated mileage would be 104K), it's only worth 13.8K, now you've lost almost as much in the last 3 years as you've lost in the first 5, not very cost effective. Sure, that doesn't factor in cost of money but that doesn't include the additional maintenance and repairs you had to do the last 3 years considering these cars come with free 4 years maintenance now. It doesn't factor in the better gas mileage these cars get year after year, it doesn't factor performance improvements, new car smell or safety changes. Just look at the past year, just about every little car, including the Mini received top ratings from the insurance institute, something that didn't happen just a year ago. Imagine a Mini or Toyota Corrola got the same safety rating as the C-Coupe did a year ago where it used to be a standout, now it's the norm.

DCXdynodog

The general rule of thumb for crankshaft design is a minimum safety factor of 2 to1 (1 being just good enough for stress levels in the original engine design)

Add power...the number get smaller.
Take away a damper which dampens twisting stress magnatude... the number gets smaller.

So you have some built in margin. You just don't know how much, nor do you know how much your margin your chewing away at.

I was running some power runs on an engine the other day in which the power was upgraded 30%. The crankshaft has not been upgraded yet (this is just a prototype, a newly designed crank is on the way) and there was trouble with our instrumentation for crank position.
This would suggest the crank is turning into a noodle under the extra load...not good.

So it's a matter of...do ya feel lucky? (as Dirty Harry would say) Especially the next owner

Certainly the Germans have a reputation for "overengineering" things which is in your favor. I would have to expect that to be changing as they get more competitive on fuel mileage and weight issues.

speedfrk

Hey DCX,
You can put all this crap to rest by asking one of your design or test engineers what the real deal is on the dampener. The pulley does not increase power anywhere near 30% more like 10-15%, so if you gave him/her that info, they could at least give you a rough estimate as to how much of a problem this might be. But with the 2.3L engine being one of the older "overengineered" engines, it is probably a lot better off than, say, the 1.8L. Sure would be nice to hear the opinion of a real engineer vs. the guesswork that has gone on here for months now.

levelr123g

the engine is internally balanced!
If it wasn't then you would need to balance each and every pulley to that particular engine. Since you can walk into any mb dealer and order the pulley from the parts dept and slap it on then the pulley is not the balancer. You are thinking of the old v-8 engines which used a harmonic balancer and which were balanced to that particular engine, not so with these cars or any other modern car.

ok so we will not use the 15000 rpm sportbike because of milage, and the only reason why is most of then dont last that long due to rider error and crashing, however we will use the honda goldwing which i have personally worked on many with over 100k on the odometer. these engines dont spin very fast but also have no dampner on the crank.These are large displacement engines, flat 6 somehwhere in the neighborhood of 1.9 liters. as for the bearing being crushed, where did you get this from? also the dampner on the end of the crank would do no good. when the air/fuel ignited and pushed on the crank the frequency would happen so fast that the dampner on the end would not make any difference because the frequency of the ignition would have to go through the piston/rod/bearing/crank/ and then to the dampner. this would be of no use.

Like i have said b4 the dampner is there to take the shock of the accessories.

outboard engines have no dampners, motorcycles have no dampners, dirtbikes have no dampners, weedeaters have no dampners, lawnmowers, etc, etc, etc.

do you see a trend here, engines that have no accesories driven off of them have no dampners, only car engines have dampners. these are also the only vehicles that have accesories. just for giggles lets use the honda goldwing again the alternator has a dampner on it, but not the engine, why? why would they dampen the alternator and not the engine?????? starts to make sense now!

as for daily driven motorcycles that see high rpm, i have a 95 cbr 600 with over 47000 miles on it and not one problem, and i rev the **** out of it. plus with modern technology they can design metals to resonate at any frequency they want to.

http://www.logueind.com/misc/stress_pubs-users.html

check out at the bottom, mercedes uses this technology.

speedfrk

nov0798,
You don't have a clue about what you are talking about. This issue is far more complicated that just having a statically balanced engine. Depending on the engine configuration (I4, V6, V8, etc) you also have harmonics, torsional stresses on the crank, and bending forces. The dampener can affect all of those depending on how it is designed, what the weight is, etc. Dampeners are often put on rotating machinery to change the natural frequency of the part or assembly in question. Depending on design, they can also do things like remove vibration from accessories, but that is not their main use. Higher order harmonics can be just as destructive to an engine as the 1st order harmonics. Believe me, we are all guessing here. I spent years working on helicopters as a vibrations and dynamics flight test engineer, and it is very complicated and usually counter-intuitive. The only people who know why that dampener is on there is the engineers that designed it. Someone with experience in engine design can make an educated guess about this particular engine, but without a lot of test data, it is all guessing.
Actually, Buellwinkle is kind of on track, because he at least, has looked for previous problems and failures which apparently are very few. That is a good sign for those using these pulleys.

BlackC230Coupe

I went to go look at the stock pulley today just to see what kind of job it is to put replace the pulley and i ran into one problem, I CANT TAKE THE AIR FILTER BOX OFF, i took off the plastic engine cover and then and then i made sure i loosend the hose clamp, the i removed the screw on the right side, then i removed the intake hose, and i tried to lift up the whole air filter box and it did not go, i pulled up very very hard and still nothing, i realized that i see something staight forward kind of under the "N" of the word Benz on the filter box that there is something that looks to be still into something. Well anyway i was not able to get the box out. What the hell did i do wrong?

x15jq

OK, loosen the rubber hose clamp on the left side, then remove the weird torx nut that connects to the exit of the intercooler.
.

Then if u look where the air intake duct is on the front grille, there is a clip on the airbox, that u need to push left, that unhooks it.

Pull REALLY hard, its rubber mounted, i was almost positive somethin was holding mine in but just yank up, and it will release. Ull see after it comes out why it was hard.

Try that.

BlackC230Coupe

i did all that except the part where i have to yank the air box up hard, i pulled up really hard but i am sure if i yanked it out it might have came out.

i will see, i might try it again tomarrow, but then again......maybe i should just wait and bring it somewhere to get the pulley installed.

Buellwinkle

Underneath the box are two tabs that slide into rubber bushings. It should put out but you can always hit these areas from below with WD40. You can see these tabs in my instructions. Also pull one at a time to leverage your strength.

levelr123g

spdfrk, if i dont know what im talking about then YOU show me 1 reported case of this type of failure. The bearing failure issue is just fear with NO basis in fact. Actually if the pulley was lighter than stock then the pulley should have the opposite effect on the bearings and entire rotating assembly.

mdp c230k

nov0798, please read this links info http://www.supras.com/~riemer/sonict...ech/dinan.html
and yes I have seen the result of lightened pulleys w/o dampers on bearings. The forces on the crank smash the bearings over time making them thinner. These thinner bearings can be forced up off the journals by oil pressure at high revs this allows them to slide by eachother and the engine is toast. It has not happened to a 2.3l yet, but why tempt fate? As for the ring type of pulley add-on, it does not change the frequency of the damper. The damper is a separate unit that is not touched by the ring, its mass does not change. Also, remember that the ring is evenly placed around the rotational axis of the crank so it contributes no unbalanced mass to the equation. The dampers you talk about on accessories are to damp the accessories and have nothing to do with damping the engines resonance. If an engines resonances are high enough a designer might be able to do away with the damper but the 2.3l is not a smooth running engine with a high primary resonance!

The Fly

I worked for many years at a high end engine building firm and I totally agree with that. I don't know about the 2.3l engine in particular, but what mdp says IS generally true.

Changing a crank pulley is going to always have risk, and IMO will shorten engine life the vast majority of the time. The only question is by how much.

Buellwinkle

So slipping a ring that is fastened with set screws is a better well balanced solution? Don't tell that to the people that fried their s/c on their coupes or came loose, they just won't believe it. BTW, the two people with s/c failures had their pulley ring put on my that manufacturers authorized dealers. No matter what you do you are taking risks. I measure my risks in terms of number of failures relative to the population vs. how long I plan on keeping my car. The only "ring style" pulley I've seen that has been truly rebalanced is the Vaeth. Doesn't mean that others dont' exists, just haven't seen them. Look at a factory pulley, usually has a bunch of holes drilled in the back for balancing, look at other pullies, did Renntech fill and redrill the holes to rebalance the pulley? Did Kleemann ask for your factory pulley so they can balance the ring to it or do the dealers have CNC balancing equipment to do this? Sure they say the ring is balanced but can you guarantee that it will fit the same way on every pulley? The only truly balanced pulleys I know of are the Vaeth, ASP or the Kleemann alloy pulley, all good pulleys and I would feel safe in putting anyone of them on my Benz regardless of what happens to Supras and BMWs.

Mdp c230k, honestly, if you are sooooo worried about altering/changing the factory crank pulley why don't you have ASP make you a smaller S/C pulley. They do it for other Eaton S/C's like on the Ford Lightning and Pontiac/Buick S/C'ed cars and they are pressed on and small, doesn't stop them. Heck the 400HP Lightning has a tiny s/c pulley, much smaller than our s/c pulley even after you shave 20% off. It's easy to complain and put other products down, if you have such strong convictions DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

levelr123g

YES I HAVE READ THAT PAPER AND THATS FINE, THAT IS ONE PERSONS THOUGHTS AND THEORIES. IF YOU READ THE PAPER HE STATES THAT THESE ARE PROBABLE, YET HE FAILS TO HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF ANY GIVEN FAILURE.HOWEVER ONCE AGAIN SHOW ME A PICTURE OF ON FAILURE, WHERE YOU CAN DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTE IT TO A LIGHTENED PULLEY, OR ONE WITHOUT A DAMPNER. I ALSO FIND IT HARD TO BELEIVE THAT THERE ARE SO MANY PULLIES SOLD OUT THERE AND I DONT HEAR OF PEOPLE COMPLAINING OF ROASTED CRANKS ETC. ALSO THE CASE OF THE BEARINGS BEING FLATTENED, HOW WOULD THIS HAPPEN BY CHANGING A PULLEY? IT WOULDNT. THE FORCE EXERTED BY THE ROD ON THE BEARING IS THE SAME NO MATTER IF IT HAS A DAMPNER OR NOT. THE FORCE APPLIED TO THE BEARINGS IS CHANGED BY BURNING MORE OR LESS FUEL IN A GIVEN AMOUNT OF TIME(I.E. AIR/FUEL CHARGE).

speedfrk

Every engine will have different characteristics. Supras are straight sixes and thus have very long crankshafts. The longer the crankshaft the more likely bearing failure will be due to undampened forces. The 4 cyl engine in the MB may very well be so overengineered that you may not see problems until the car has quite a few miles on it, but that has yet to be tested. As I said earlier, it is all guesswork unless you find out why the dampener was put on in the first place.
nov0798, trying to extrapolate your experience with motorcycle engines to this particular situation is not at all relevent. Totally different designs and function. Maybe someone can chime in with their thoughts on Cessna engines too.
I agree with Buellwinkle about the balancing issue. The only one you can really trust to be balanced and still act as the factory dampener is the Vaeth. Very pricey though.
In the end, you just have to decide if the risk is worth it to you. If you are only going to keep the car a couple of years, it is probably OK. If you are going to keep it for years and years, I would think twice about it.