I'm sure this has been discussed before (but at least not recently).

Has anyone tried using a light crankshaft pulley for their S? Or even the whole set (including alternator, power steering, A/C)?

Was there an improvement?

Or they don't even exist at all ...

Thanks.

 

Rick's used to offer lightweight aluminum pulley sets. I think there was a lack of interest and are no longer offered.
Billman250 has them on his car, he can comment to their performance.

 

My advice is: Unless you race and plan to rebuild your engine, then avoid the crankshaft pulley.

Honda has a harmonic balancer on the stock pulley. Aftermarket ones do NOT. I'd just look somewhere else for extra power.

 

The light weight crank pulley will blow your engine eventually

 

Pretty much. I'd bet the wear on the main bearings for Cyl 1 and 2 would show notably increased wear after 10k+ miles without a damper.

 

Thanks for your replies ...

I never knew about the harmonic balancers when I had it on my old car until much later after I've installed it, but then I never had the car long enough to notice a durability issue (only had the car for around 15Kmiles but liked the improvement in response, though dyno showed a mere 3hp of gain on that).

In any case, thanks!

 

Yeah, I ran one on my last car and it gave a notable power increase (dropped something like 8-10lbs off the pulley weight along with a good amount of underdrive), but it was generally accepted that the extra wear for that engine (due to the setup) would be almost none.

Moral of the story: They work on some engines without problems, but on others they can really mess things up.

 

Most GM engines have a completely seperate harmonic balancer that is to be kept even with an aftermarket pulley.

 

This is quite possibly one of the most debated arguments when it comes to mods and always will be. I know people who have run Unorthodox pulleys for 5 + years with zero problems. As unorthodox has pointed out on there website "we would have been out of business years ago, if our pulleys were causing these kind of problems"

The bottome line is, do what make you comfortable. It just irritates me sometimes when information is spread by people who have nothing to back it up with other than " I heard from a friend of a friend of friend who's cousins neighbor had a problem with a crank pulley.

 

My engine started to make a really loud knocking sound on my civic while reving up really high all of a sudden. The problem was bearing failure on the #1 cyl. I don't think it was my intake that caused that one. Same thing happened to another friend of mine. They don't blow on engines that have seperate balancers. Ours is integrated so I'd definately stay away. Better safe than sorry.