Guys, I have a 6.5" custom made crank pulley by ASP, Texas. I have a Vortech V2 on my AP1 with a 4" custom made pulley by ASP as well. I have had the blower belt rip about 5 times now and twice it took the OEM serpentine belt with it!

Here's what I have checked:
- pulleys are all aligned
- pulleys are in good condition
- last time the belt ripped I think I set the tension too high and I did that because the previous time it ripped I think the tension was too low. This time I made sure to tension the belt to 1/4 turn or 90 degrees twist as per Vortech's instructions but again, the thing ripped, slipped or whatever else it did to put me in this position...

It held up to a few 9 grand pulls just fine until suddenly there was smoke and strange noise. The blower belt had ripped and was clean off the blower's pulley. The OEM belt was tattered and torn as well but still remained on its pulleys.

Why am I having this problem? Could it be that the clearance between my crank and water pump pulleys are too tight? I am wondering if while driving and pushing hard, the belts collide with each other when one or the other stretches even just a bit during shifts???

 

Get the cheapest belt you can get, put it on, tighten to the same spec, do one or two runs to 9K and stop. Inspect the belt for damage. Might give you a hint on which side is getting chewed up and compromised. From there you can investigate further.

 

That's a good idea. Now that I've been through a few belts I'm wondering if their quality has been the problem all along. My first belt was the Gates green stripe HD belt and it never ripped until the blower's idler pulley came loose and threw it out of whack. That was understandable. I changed out that idler's bearing so it won't misalign again. I didn't run the green belt for many miles with lots of 9k but all throughout tuning I did and that belt held up well

 

Gates OEM type belt stretches a bit and not as tough as the green belt

Gates Green belt is softer rubber so grips better but also is designed to stretch more than the OEM type belt

Gates RPM belt has softer rubber like green belt but does not stretch at all, however, due to its inability to be flexible rumor has it, it can snap if not tightened properly. That never happened to me however.

To this day nothing beat my Gates RPM belt from slip standpoint. I recommend that once you feel confident that there isn’t an actual problem and then buy the expensive RPM belt.

 

I have crank pulleys from ASP as well and it's about as tight as you can reasonable get. It's hard to tell from the pic, but there is about a dime's width space between crank and water pump pulley and they also overlap (so I have to take off the water pump pulley for the OE belt). I've driven the car from Indiana to Pennsylvania and back and then to Texas and it's never chewed a belt so I don't think it's your clearances.

vortech pulleys

 

Might need to drop back down the 6" crank pulley and run a smaller blower pully to maintain your current boost. If the pullies are indeed in alignment, I suspect there is some interference somewhere if not totally obvious stationary, things expand and flex under heat and load.

 

I had good experience with the Gates HD Green belt i had initially. Unfortunately that ripped when the idler pulley bearing was shot and loosened the pulley throwing things out of alignment before i could catch it in time. Got another green belt incoming.

The RPM belt sounds great but they cost like a 100 or more?? You're right, i have to be completely sure nothing is wrong before buying one of those.

I have a Gates OEM belt ready to go but its for a smaller pulley. It doesn't fit my current setup right.

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My clearance is just as tight! I also need to remove my water pump pulley to remove and install the OEM belt! Your experience shows that it can't be the problem. I think i may have found the problem now. I didn't have a washer on the lock nut for the tensioner pulley. I realized that now so i installed one and immediately it caused the tensioner to become nice and flush with the bracket when i test fitted it. This may have been the alignment problem all along! I need to test it tomorrow and see for sure

 

I'd really like to keep the larger crank pulley for more boost and better belt wrap but already I'm considering going from ~4" blower pulley to 3.5 in the next few months. I want the blower to give me max boost all the time (although a 3.5" would cause it to run into the over spinning territory lol)

I think i found the cause. Missing washer on the tensioner pulley. Hopefully that did the trick this time.

I also notice that my Vortech tensioner pulley is not flanged. Only the idler and blower pulley are flanged.

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Don’t feel too bad, tensioner pulley on SOS, Comptech and CT-E is also not flanged.