2000UZJ

Well, against a exploding pulley the FSP is safer. AMG designed the S/C to run with a clutch for several reasons. I myself will never run a FSP due to not being able to disengage the S/C. It's a double edged sword...I will never run a S/C pulley unless they create a OE based pulley with the OE quality.

viper04

I would say yes! due to the fact it one solid piece, its torqued to the supercharger with the main bolt nothing to come apart unless it spins off the supercharger.

the new guy

Just to fill every one in I said earlier that I didn't think the scatter shield would have prevented most of my damage that happened during this , I didn't mean to undermine chris's (latemodel21) product as he is going out of his way to make something to help us guys out with aftermarket pulleys , since posting that I have talked to him and he is going to be helping me out and making me a modified shield to work with some damage I have to one of my posts. He Is a good guy and chimed in immediately to help out no harm was ment from my earlier post. if you are running an aftermarket pulley I would talk to him and get a scatter shield to be on the safe side , I my self learned the hard way that you do need to keep an eye on the rivits in the pulley and watch the tolerences on the clutch gap. with a little more inspection I might have been able to avoid this whole incident. Lessons learned time to repair and move on

E55Freak

So you installed it but didn't check the gap clearance? Just curious to see if this is why it failed??

SilverStrk

This is what I was getting at in my previous post, torque specs WILL CHANGE the gap clearance. What are the torque specs suppose to be?? MB has theirs, after market guys have a different spec. This will make you use a few shims or more to get the required gap.


We need the vendors to chime in.. My new pulley used 1 shim and came in at .52 I believe.. I will have the shop re-inspect to make sure it has not changed..

FinanceMike

Spend the money on a well known crank pulley (ASP, Kleemann or Renntech), get it keyed and you wont have to worry about these issues.

The repair/labor costs of sc pulley failures will offset any of the upfront cost savings.

the new guy

I had an amg certified shop by me install the pulley when I first purchased the car. That was almost 9k miles ago,I never checked the gap at the time it never made any noises, had any problems untill this weekend, I noticed Sunday morning that the clutch seemed to intermittently engage the supercharger at idle while I was at a gas station on my way home 4 hours later it let loose, it could have had damage to it for a while and the 10 hrs of driving I did this weekend was the last straw and caused it to fail. I hadn't been routinely checking on it to see if it was moving over those 8k miles so it it's my fault for negligence could have prevented the damage done if I had caught it

djrabbi

My pulley got loud and had to change bearing.....maybe same issue.

latemodel21

If only that were the case. (that OEM SC pulleys NEVER go "sawsall mode")
I have a Renntech 168 on my SL55 and had an OEM SC pulley on it .... until the OEM supercharger pulley came apart. Of course I'm not saying it is likely to happen ... but it did happen to me.
Chris

sircl55amg

more pics of the pulley

FinanceMike

I understand that things happen and all parts can break. I'm just saying if you take the number of sc pulley failures related to the time they have been on the market and total miles put on them, the reliability nod goes heavy in favor of a welded crank pulley.

I can say that in south Florida, I know first hand of at least a dozen sc pulleys that have failed. I had 2 go bad on me and when I sold my car, the last one was starting to get noisy as well.

HykakanAMG

latemodel21

I wont disagree with any of that.

but I will add ...
Something to consider in this equation is the load that the 3 springs (and their rivets) are subjected to. Consider that the Supercharger may take 50 (60..?) or more horsepower to compress the incoming air. Whatever this load happens to be .... is split between the 3 springs .... NOW, add a larger crank pulley AND the load on the SC pulley (aftermarket or OEM) goes up. I'm not suggesting that the sky is falling here ... BUT as I always recommend, (particularly when the SC is being spun faster) it is important to routinely inspect the rivets and springs for indications of eminent failure (cracking, etc).

....AND ... for those who don't think $110 is too much for some added protection and peace of mind, there is the scattershield which is cheap insurance (and comes with a money back guarantee) ...

Cheers,
Chris

romeomikehotel

100% safer.

I've put over 15k miles on mine in the past 6mo daily driven with no problems. The main reason going fixed was to avoid these clutched pulley problems and I didnt want to do crank pulley.

The crank pulley is probably the overall safest bet but I enjoy the fsp too much at this point to change.

jmb614

I really don't understand why people buy this šhitty product.

e55amgrocket

It's funny when someone wants to buy one of these pulleys Shardul is the first one to the page but when something like this happens he's MIA.

rog2961

This. Not just him all the vendors. I've presented the question in the past on the reliability of pullies, what revisions blah blah blah and got nothing.

FinanceMike

...and I can't disagree with any of your points either.

My thoughts on the upper pulley are, if it was as simple as fabricating a smaller pulley and pressing in a bearing, RennTech, Kleemann and all the other top speed shops would have jumped on the idea many years ago. They have the $$ to do the research and development.

I jumped on the band wagon and bought the upper pulley as well. It wasn't until I sat down with the owner of a well known European tuner/parts manufacture that I learned why the upper pulley wasn't a great idea. It has too many limitations with efficiency and reliability.

blackbenzz

There are a few things to point out here. There have been MANY supercharger pulley failures. This cannot be denied. For those that have been on this site for a while we can recall the last Shardul/Brooke venture called RTR with the flying crank pulleys and now this with their new endeavor UPD. Then there were "revisions" that were made that nobody can define because every time a pulley lets go someone says either A) That wasn't the newest revision (which begs the question why wasn't the original recalled?) B) It was a knockoff (Do they even make knockoffs???) and even when the place of purchase is mentioned nothing happens. C) People are not bright and even after having a pulley explode on them they still put another pulley on as long as the person says this "new" pulley will be fine even though the first pulley they sold you clearly wasn't. D) When people speak up about issues there are blind supporters that bash them even though this is CLEARLY an issue. E) The site does nothing about the issue even though it is affecting the forum members. I guess as long as they pay their sponsor dues anything goes.

As previously stated, if anyone mentions any interest in a sc pulley or modding their car Shardul/etc are quick to push their products (whether it's through a post or PM/s). But when threads like this pop up they are nowhere to be found. So you can take peoples money, but you can't back your own product? And this is acceptable behavior for site sponsors??? If your product warrants a scatter shield, I will not be purchasing. The one person I've heard of with an AMG original pulley failure sells the scattershields, coincidence?

gts007

that's sucks bro. hope you get her back on the road soon..

latemodel21

I'll ignore the thinly veiled implication of dis-ingeniousness and just say that there is no coincidence at all. My pulley (oem) failed ... so I CREATED A SOLUTION . As you would have as well I imagine. That's what I do to contribute ... and as always I appreciate the solutions that you contribute as well.

Cheers,
Chris

djrabbi

Why not just contact who you bought it from and get a replacement? I know Shardul, EC, and other vendors replace them ASAP. Obviously if everyone makes all these "pointing" fingers thread, I personally wouldn't either unless you asked them first and they denied. Then I would post all this on the forums. Modding these cars are fun but expensive honestly. I think the person who had the car before you had this pulley right?

I had a similar issue where my buyer's pulley fell off or snapped and contacted Shardul right away and he replaced everything but he didn't post because common sense would say if you bad mouth a vendor on this site, they aren't going to help unless **knock on wood** someone died.

FLINTY55

I'm new to the E55 game and can honestly say this thread has caught my attention. I need to research some pulley details to understand this better and start some due diligence!

NSWEuroCharged

blackbenzz, you are right to continue to call out the very abnormal number of aftermarket Pulley failures as they are extremely damaging, dangerous and costly to repair.

The variances in required Torque Specs for SC pulley is also very worthy of calling out as is the silence from pulley vendors on the Torque variances, counter to the attention shown in selling of the pulleys.

Having a pop at Chris distracts from your very valid points above and is uncalled for. Not sure theres a big conspiracy being hatched from Chris's shed at the end of his garden........thats assuming you have a shed Chris?

latemodel21

several sheds, no garden

no conspiracy ..... although "coincidentally", every time I create a solution ... if follows discovering a problem. (necessity IS the mother of invention)



cheers,
Chris