Underdrive pulley installation cost

Although there is a general consensus that battery issues may occur if you idle your vehicle at city driving speeds for an extended time, most vehicles will experience a benefit with this modification. It may not spin the vehicle accessories fast enough. When an underdrive pulley is poorly designed, there may be several unwanted side effects experienced during driving.

It may not spin the alternator fast enough, which can lead to premature battery death, even while driving. It may offer a weak air conditioning experience, if the system even works at all. There may be issues with the power steering assistance, especially when operating the vehicle at a low RPM.

There is a power reduction issue which must be considered. When you have belt-driven components, then you are given a buffer zone for your performance parameters that includes additional output capacities. Some may even go beyond the maximum specs which are listed for the item. If you upgrade to an underdrive pulley, however, then all your components will run simultaneously.

That creates a voltage drop in your charging system that reduces overall power access. You might find that your headlights are not as bright as they used to be. In severe situations, it would impact driver safety when using the vehicle. There are cooling issues associated with underdrive pullies. That may result in a higher normal operating temperature for your engine. If the unit is oversized too much, you could experience an overheating issue.

It may affect the performance of your after-market additions. If you made modifications to your vehicle that are designed for high-performance situations, then your after-market efforts may not work properly when you upgrade to an underdrive pulley. In severe instances, the addition of after-market electric fuel pumps or cooling fans have been impacted by the change to underdrive pullies, which affected the core functionality of the vehicle to be used.

Before then, it was almost always used in race cars only. For street car owners who want a small boost in performance, then the underdrive pulley is an option. Underdrive pulleys work best with a manual transmission. Because an underdrive pulley diverts HP that would be wasted from accessory to drive your crank faster, you create more power that is usable. As you know, every time you get a little something, then you must also give a little something in return.

You can avoid many of these issues by not operating your headlights and air conditioning system simultaneously. Some vehicles, however, require further upgrades to resolve the issue. You may need to run a secondary battery, install a capacitor for an upgraded stereo, and upgrade the alternator. You may need a new serpentine belt installed after the upgrade. You must measure for the new belt once the work is done. Have all the pulleys you plan to run installed on your vehicle.

Then take a string to run the route of each pulley. When your string meets the starting point, make your mark and measure the distance.

It may cause harmonic issues with specific vehicles. On some vehicles, you may find that the presence of an underdrive pulley creates more vibration within the vehicle. There have been harmonic issues associated with ASP underdrive pulleys that have resulted in broken timing chains. Although many vehicles can have this issue countered with the installation of a damper, that is not a guarantee.

Every car responds differently to the upgrade, so make sure you pay attention to any unusual symptoms that creep up. It may create a deformation of your crankshaft. Some vehicle owners believe that their crankshaft is large and strong enough to be rigid and inflexible.

On some makes and models, the installation of underdrive pulleys can create twists, bends, and flexes in the crankshaft that are similar to what you could do with a rubber band. Although each movement is small, there can be significant impacts on the overall performance of the engine. There are fatigue failures associated with underdrive pulleys. With repeated bending and twisting, metals eventually experience fatigue failure. Think about what happens when you bend a metal paper clip back and forth enough times.

It will eventually break. The same thing can occur to a vehicle after it receives an underdrive pulley upgrade. You may create an imbalance of the reciprocating or rotating parts. Mustang Forum - Mustang World.

Share Share with:. Link: Copy link. GT and similar for Cobra! Here we will show you how to install a set of underdrive pullies on the 4. The installation is similar on the 4. These are a set of March pullies. Some nice things about this set is the fact that all three pullies are billet aluminum for great weight savings and less rotational mass for each pulley. We've been waiting for this feature from several kits we've seen and used.

On the 5. You don't even need to change the alternator pulley, but we did just to show you how it's easy. The 4. So you will still need to bolt your stock crank pulley to your new underdrive to have this extra dampening. You will need to use a special harmonic balancer pulling tool to remove the stock crank pulley BTW "pulleys" is the correct plural spelling VS "pullies" ;-.

Here'we go! Disconnect the battery before starting: 1. Here is the March set of all billet machined pulleys all three. You get an alternator, water pump and crank pulley. They come with a new crank shaft bolt and hardware. Here are your stock pulleys. The alternator, water pump, and crank pulley are the ones we'll be changing out.

Here is the Alternator pulley. It's held on with one large nut. It will need to be removed with an special impact wrench. Here is your water pump pulley. It is held in place with 4 bolts. You can use a wrench to remove it. Here is your crank pulley. It is held in place with one bolt. You'll need a large wrench, 18mm socket and a harmonic balancer pulling tool to remove it. Here is a shot if the harmonic balancer pulling tool. You'll need this to remove the crank pulley in the 4.

You can't do this install without it. To remove all the bolts, leave the belt in place and loosen all the bolts. Here we used our air impact wrench. Took 90 seconds to loosen up the crank, water pump and alternator. If you don't have an impact wrench, you'll need to do all of this manually. Everything can be done manually with the exception of the alternator pulley nut.

See the next step. For those with no impact wrench, no problem, remove your alternator and take it down to your local Chief, Pep-boys, etc.. They will remove and install your new underdrive pulley most for free!

No problem. The alternator is held in your stang by 3 bolts, one on top, 2 on the bottom. Also disconnect 2 wire clips and one ground wire, then remove. NOTE: You will need to use the large spacer to have the new alternator pulley running in the belt line. Put both the stock alt. Forget about lining up the edges of the pulleys, it's the belt grooves that need to line up. After you've loosened all the pulleys nuts and bolts , you can then put a wrench with no socket into the belt tensioner and move it up to remove the belt.

Now remove the water pump pulley, and keep it off. Make sure the crank bolt is also removed. See above notes about this. By turning the balancer removal tool's center bolt, it "pulls" the crank pulley right off. Make sure you have one hand on the pulley so it does not fall to the floor during removal.

We say "balancer" because folks won't know what we're talking about if we called this a "dampener". Up close you can see the rubber vibration dampening material around the outside of the crank pulley. This is why it is also referred to as the "dampener". Again: On the 5. On the 4. This confuses many Mustang enthusiasts, so we want to make this clear.

Also note the "Notch" key!