Lee just woke me up from my sleep...telling me some pretty bad news...

1) He had sent me the new aluminium pulley
2) However, the aluminium has just failed !
3) Therefore, he told me to reject it from UPS

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The alternatives

1) Use my first generation ASP pulley ( He wont be offering any warranty as of march 31st.)

2) Send in my factory pulley, he will modify it and send it back to me.

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damm..wats wrong with these pulley stuff

 

Failed! how did it fail? I hope everyone else with the new spec pully is fine. Im just gonna keep running the older pully then...im not a fan of stuff bolted together.

Didnt they use your old spec pully to make the new one?


~fk

 

i am gonna send in my FACTORY pulley....

 

yeah, I got the call today too. REFUSE THE DELIVERY! Great, I might be stuck having him mod the factory pulley too. The other choices cost too much.

byron

 

Which ASP pulley are you talking about that failed?
You mean the new steel hub version failed as well, or the old steel sleeve version failed??

 

Yes, the new one with the steel hub. I've had mine for about 2K miles and very high revs testing it on a dyno and doing intercooler air intake temperature testing and no problems so I wouldn't panic. If you sense anything is wrong, stop the car, check the pulley/belts and tow the car if anything looks out of the ordinary.

 

Thanks Buell, I'll inspect it tonight.

BTW, did you know where it failed? Was it around the screw areas?

 

how exactly did it fail, how many have failed? what are they going to do about it? Ive had mine for a while now but i never installed it, I was afraid that there wasnt enough r/d on the new one, and im not a fan of things being bolted on to prevent failure

 

Based on what I know it was a pulley that was recently installed with a few hundred miles and it broke at the screws. It's only one and many are out there like mine with no problems. I just took my air filter box off and inspected mine and there's no signs of cracking, I can put a lot of pressure back and forth and side to side and it feels very solid, if it didn't I would not have shipped my factory pulley to Lee just now, which I did. Lee will call each and every person that has an ASP pulley and offer a refund or free conversion to a Renntech style pulley if they act before March 31st. This new pulley is a factory pulley (yours) that has had the ribs of the larger belt plane machined off smooth, a ring with new pulley grooves pressed on and then welded for extra strength, same diameter as before. This should only take a few days from when he gets it. Then it has to go to a balancer to be rebalanced, the same way the factory pulley is done and that takes about a week and half.

The solid pullies are covered under ASP's warranty until March 31st. What you can do until you get your new style pulley back or the factory pulley back on is to drive at most with 1/2 to 3/4 throttle, any more and the bypass valve will close and it will put more pressure on the pulley. Also the first sign of trouble is the alternator warning, steering gets heavy, coolent temps rise above 100C. If you get any of these symptoms, shut the engine off immediately and get towed back where you can inspect the pulley. Lee will pay for the towing or use AAA or MB Roadside Assistance.

 

Are you positive the conversion will be free? I haven't received the call from him yet but this offer seems good as the only money I need to put in is the shipping and the cost difference between the stock and ring upgrade.

 

Aren't the many ASP pulley users doing the R&D for them already? If they request I can do some FEA for them, as my previous analysis did predict the hot spots at the screw locations. The harmonic analysis I just finished today didn't show good signs at those locations either. Vibration changes things at lot.

 

Likely, also thermal expansion/contraction, as these two materials have different coefficients.

 

I want to clarify my previous statement: on the Pulley FEA thread I said the stress on those "hot spots" were compressive. But when put the pulley into vibration (+/- motions) those become tensile and things get ugly.

BTW, Lee called and he said he'll credit the difference between the alloy and ring type pulley for upgraders, which is about $150. This means I only need to pay the shipping back to them!

My impression is that ASP may not be the top R&D firm, which I don't think they claim to be one, but at least they are honest and trully stand behind their products. Apparantly the road of stepping into being a European auto tuner is not smooth. Now I see why others charge so much for their products.

 

I give ASP credit for backing up the product. I also think that the R&D was missing and thats why others charge more for their pulleys. Just think of how much money, time, and frustration came out of someones 'great' idea to save a buck and have a pulley made to their 'specs'. Basically stick to those that know what they are doing in the first place, it costs less in the long run. Buellwinkle, I told you so! Stick to whatever it is you do and leave the engineering to the pros. Your good intentions have cost a lot of people a lot of trouble.

 

mdp, I don't totally agree, I had a pulley company make pulleys based on their knowledge of making pulleys, not mine. My input was in providing specs in the way of how big it can be before rubbing, provided them with a factory pulley, and provided with how other companies where making pulleys, no engineering input whatsoever. Actually it was ASP's original plan to make a ring pulley using the factory damper but in a poll on this forum at the time most wanted a Kleemann style alloy pulley.

I also provided my car as the first to do the testing needed to make it happen. My car has run close to a year with about 12K miles on the pulleys with no failure and my testing was harsh with dyno and track time. I also assumed (my bad) that a solid pulley would work based on how long Kleemann has been making solid pulleys at the time. The good news is that everyone will be taken care of and Lee has taken great measure in making this new pulley bulletproof.

 

Now, wait a minute... Did you also say "I told you so!" to Kleemann? Their all-alloy pulley is essentially the same - and prone to the same damage, if anything.
I was one of the first on this board to install the pulley, so it's been a long time, and the car has been driven very hard. Last Sunday I took my pulley off - it was in good shape, no signs of damage. What I'm trying to say is - so far there has been only one case of broken pulley (Jeff's), yet a lot of people jumped into speculating and making generalizations, accusing ASP of lack of class. I'm not sure how many alloy pulleys Kleemann has sold so far, but that single failure could have been theirs just as easily.

 

Stop the flame guys. A constructive approach is to discuss how to solve the problem, not to find who should take the blame.

That's why after so many problems (I think I'm the one having the most problem as my current pulley is the 4th one from them already) I still stick with ASP. They never blame anybody on things like "I told you not to make it that big!" "I warned you to go with a ring type at the beginning!" blah blah blah. They just step in, foot the bill, and work on the solution!

 

this kinda makes me wonder why we haven't heard of any failures on a kleeman pulley. are they exactly identical?

 

It's hard to say why. The ASP pulleys are basically sold on the forums only and there's a lot of them out there in comparison to all other tuners pulleys' combined sold to forums members. So it's the law of averages. If there are 50 people on the forums with one pulley and 12 with another brand then it's 4 times as likely to show a problem.

 

ASP is NOT gonna do the modification on the factory pulley for free.

They will refund us the cost of our pulley, and then, charge us for the modifications if we decide to do it.

But i am pretty sure Lee told me that he will reimburse my installation cost ( i am gonna do it with Linh). However, dont hold me to it as i was half asleep when he called...well..make it 90% asleep..

 

Granted I had the first known failure, but it wasn't the last, and there may very well be more.

ASP handled my problem as professionally as one could hope for, and for that, they have my respect. As someone else posted, when there's a problem, they deal with it. All of my repair costs were covered, the only thing I didn't get was a refund for the purchase price of my pulley, I paid the original cost of $350 plus shipping. I suspect Lee just forgot, it was an oversight. Considering ASP covered an enormous engine repair bill, I never mentioned it.

All things considered, I think ASP deserves a lot of credit for their professionalism.

 

What I wanted to say was at least I won't pay $350, end up with a $200 version, and lose a factory pulley. The $350 was already spent a long time ago, so for me the $150 reimbursement will be extra cash and if I need to buy a stock pulley in the future I won't hurt so much.

 

Buell, that's not right. If they're the same quality, then the same relative # of people will have a problem. Both pulleys should be just as likely to have a problem, ie, if out of the 50 ASP pulley people, 10 have problems, then 2.4 (don't know how you get 4/10's of a person - maybe she's pregnant?) should have a problem with their Kleemann, to use your numbers.

Not saying anything about anyone's skills, but there might be something to all Kleemann pulleys being professionally installed. Of course, it could be that the Kleemann pulley people just aren't as vocal. In any case, this is yet another reason why I think I'll wait until I burn off another 26k miles before even thinking about any of this stuff.

 

Sadly I have been wanting a pulley since I got the car. I always wanted a little extra power. Unfortunately asp's 2 versions have had problems now, I was actually about ot order the steel hubbed version.

What exactly is the problem with it? I didnt understand the post about the exact problem, i read the whole thread.

So they wont be stocking pulleys with dampners I assume right? It will purley be just send in your stock pulley and get it done?

Unfortnuately Ill need a pulley for the meantime when its gettind done

I wont even get a kleemann pulley as its based on the same principle asthe alloypulley. The only thing I would have felt safe with is a renntech, but there so pricy and who knows if it has its problems becasue of its small user base.

 

You've got two cars. Just park the coupe for a couple weeks and drive the CLK.