Whats the current consensus on the available pulleys on the market - there's been heaps of posts on this but they are all quite old.

I'm keen for a ~62mm clutched pulley and keen to hear what people are either buying or recommending. I'd like to get my hands on a Karmen pulley.....

Similarly, crank pulleys - what options are out there.? The LET one looked like a better dampener...

 

I have been going through a very similar self debate on what to do. I have since bought the eurocharged 65mm supercharger pulley, and also the needswings 178mm crank and psk. I will soon be doing cooling and fuel mods to compensate and an updated tune for the hardware. I am currently tuned with the dcai, res 2nd cat delete. I am relly excited for the jump in power!

 

 

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm keen to not modify my engine at all. I'm not saying there's necessarily a correlation, but based on my own limited observations it seems nearly all C32s that suffer catastrophic engine failure have modifications along these lines (bigger crank pulley, smaller s/charger pulley, ECU tune, headers). It seems to me the biggest weakness is the 2 piece camshafts - I know there was an update to the cams and the very early models like mine are more prone to having issues - but as far as I know the superceded parts are still hollow 2 piece parts. Another weak point (not specific to the C32s) is the injectors, failing such that they hydrolock the cylinders. I personally think heat is a major contributor to failure of those components - uneven heating in the case of the cams, and the fuel injectors being exposed to so much more heat in these supercharged MB engines than others. All other things being equal, more power means more heat. And in the case of these "hot vee" supercharged engines that heat can be more challenging to deal with. The fluids that need to pick up and carry away as much heat as possible from the intercooler, are also physically close to the cylinder heads (and therefore the cams and injectors).

I'm really not trying to be "that guy", and I'm all for people doing their own thing (especially when it comes to more power), I'd just hate to see someone rush into a decision like this without considering the bigger picture. Again this is my own personal opinion, but if I were to do any sort of modifications to increase power, I would make sure to upgrade the cooling system like nobody's business. There are aftermarket intercoolers that claim to have significantly better thermal dissipation that stock, and there are higher flow IC pumps. Upgrading the radiator is probably not quite as straightforward, as it also regulates temperature of the transmission oil, I'm not sure if there are any plug-and-play upgrades there. Lower temperature thermostat might be an option too, but I'm not sure if that would screw with the engine management system. In fact, I'm tempted to make some of these cooling upgrades my first and only modifications to the engine.

I've only had my C32 about a year so am still pretty new to the scene - I'm curious to know if any of the C32 owners on here with more experience think there's any merit to this, or if I'm just being paranoid? Anyone here put a ton of miles on theirs after performing some of these modifications? If so, what (if anything) did you also do to aid cooling?