A friend of mine today picked up my 3.33 pulley to blueprint it. He is going to cnc machine some pulleys out of billet. He is trying to see if there is a market to sale them. He will be making the 3.33, 3.12, 2.78, 2.62 and a 2.5X size pulleys. Prices will be announced once he sees there is a market for them. If you are interested please post back on this. One thing i can say is though, they will be cheaper than the vortech pulleys.

 

Give it a shot--The way I see it, there are a minimum of 7 machine set-ups, plus final detailing. He will be hard pressed to make a profit and make a pulley in place of one that is known to work. Custom sizes---Maybe, at a price

 

May want to design in an oversize bearing and diagonal cut the ribs

 

He is looking the pulley over now to see if it can be improved in anyway. He actually thought about making it interchangeable. Making into 2 pieces. Using some hardware to attach the shaft to a outside pulley piece. Same some time on removal and installation. The guy is smart and good at what he does. He owns all the machines and stays busy. This will be just something for him to do.

He has already told me that if the market is there, he will be vortech pulley prices without a doubt.

 

Definitely good market strategy. A friend of mine with supercharged mr2 had his cusco pulley machined out of aluminum. The boost climbed faster and reached higher psi at lower rpm. Definitely a good mod but risky..

 

I am not understanding how there could be 7 setups.?.?

First, the majority of the pulley can be done in one setup on a CNC and if he has a CNC with a secondary spindle he can do it in one setup. Different size pullies/rib combinations can be simply configured using one program for all of them using a macro/parametric program in which you call out the OD and number of grooves. You could make a marco/parametrics CNC program that essentially could make any SC pulley (serpentine) in exsistance including offset ones and recessed centers by just changing the variables and putting 0 for the variables of the features that you do not wish to machine.

I garuntee you can make them for extremely cheap in comparison to what Vortech charges. I know this because we make them at 928 motorsports and they are crazy cheap compared to what you are paying for them.

Just wanted to clarify that.

 

The other thing is that "custom sizes" is a marketing ploy that companies use. A good machine shop that knows what they are doing will make one program and it will cover all sizes and therefor if there is such a thing as "custom sizes" then there can not be the exsistance of "stock sizes" since they are all just as easy as the next to make.

 

Just incase anyone is not familiar with this, essentially a program can be writen like an algebaric equation.

If you think about it there is always a given number of variables to a pulley (serpentine) that is made on a turning center other then the key way which is a secondary operation

a-number of grooves
b-diameter
c-offset of first groove from mating surface
d-shaft size
e-draft angle (makes them look nice and reduces weight)
f- recess for compression nut depth
g-recess for compression nut inner diameter
h-shaft inner diameter
etc. etc.

If you make the equation right you can simply change the variables in the machine and even though your variable callouts in the program are limited to #1-#26 (a-z) you can create more variables then that by doing simple sub equations such as a/z, a*z etc.

If you don't want something like a recess you can simply enter 0 or whatever number it is that will prevent it from being machined.

Just so you can see what really goes into making the pullies with the exception of the key way.

 

interested.

 

One thing you might want to look into is milling the inter lip on the outside of the pulley. This is only required for any pulley smaller than a 3.12". The reason for this is that the pulley will rub on the outside of the jackshaft. If you mill out the pulley on the outside the pulley will then be able to fit around the jackshaft allowing people to run a smaller pulley.

Btw...I have seen those interchangable pullies. A place called Pulley Boys has these. Basically there is a standard Hub. And you just have to losen the bolts and change the outter part. Another place that has pullies like this is ALTA performance for their Mini Coopers.

 

I cut down my 3.33" pulley to 3.00" and hard-anodized it all for the princely sum of $10!

 

Not to put a downer on this, but instead of making pulleys for the jackshaft, why not make the one so that we can do the TIMROD setup without having to have a machine shop do it? Honestly, I just don't see a huge market for the pulleys. Either way, good luck with the venture.