My Vortech is eating up cog belts? Could the bracket be flexing?
My Vortech is eating up cog belts? Could the bracket be flexing?
I recently replaced my cog pulley on my head unit as it was pretty messed up and was causing damage to my cog belts. I put a brand new belt on about 250 miles ago with this new cog. Today I noticed that the left side of the cog belt was frayed (This being the inside closest to the supercharger head unit). I removed the belt for inspection and overall the belt is not messed up so the pulley I replaced helped that but I am missing chunks of rubber on the one side of the belt. Also, I was missing chunks of rubber on my previous cog belts before I replaced the cog pulley so this issue has been going on for some time, I just figured it was a result of the bad cog pulley. It seems that my vortech bracket may be slightly bent when I put a long yard stick to it, but it's hard to determine this without completely taking it out and laying it on a flat surface. I also noticed that my other cog pulley seems closer to the cam sensor plug (circled in the second picture) as it was even harder to get the cog belt out but this may just be me, but I sear that belt used to just slide right in and out an now it's almost touching this plug/wire. I can manually move the bracket back and fourth by pushing on the supercharger so I can see that there is some flex, just wonder how much this moves while under full boost. I'm guessing this damage to my cog belt is a result of flexing, now I just need to figure out the best way to fix this problem. Do you guys think this is a flexing issue or something else? If it is, there really is no way to "brace" the Vortech bracket, so maybe I could have one made out of steel? Could the aluminum of lost it's strength over time from the stress and a new bracket is in order? Ideas? thoughts?
Last edited by 350Z400rwhp; May 14, 2010 at 01:32 PM.
you can't use a crappy yardstick to tell if something is square. You need a straightedge to do that. yardsticks are horribly warped.
anyways, that belt looks like it's rubbing something. make sure nothing is around it that could move over onto the belt when the car hits bumps or something.
also, that plate won't flex if properly mounted. Make sure you have all hte proper spacers behind the plate moutning it to the car. I have zero flex in mine. Also if it did in fact flex it would cause issues with the serpentine belt also.
there is also the case if the cog belt is too tight. It shoudln't be tight. It has teeth to drive the cogs therefore doesn't need pressure/friction to move things. It should have at least 1/4" play when fully hot.
Check the tensioner pulley. If there is a bur on the edge of that tensioner pulley lip it would chew up the edge of a belt like that.
and trust me, this thing isn't putting out enough power to flex that plate....i'm running 14psi on mine on a full build engine/heads.
anyways, that belt looks like it's rubbing something. make sure nothing is around it that could move over onto the belt when the car hits bumps or something.
also, that plate won't flex if properly mounted. Make sure you have all hte proper spacers behind the plate moutning it to the car. I have zero flex in mine. Also if it did in fact flex it would cause issues with the serpentine belt also.
there is also the case if the cog belt is too tight. It shoudln't be tight. It has teeth to drive the cogs therefore doesn't need pressure/friction to move things. It should have at least 1/4" play when fully hot.
Check the tensioner pulley. If there is a bur on the edge of that tensioner pulley lip it would chew up the edge of a belt like that.
and trust me, this thing isn't putting out enough power to flex that plate....i'm running 14psi on mine on a full build engine/heads.
Make sure the wormgear clamp bolt isn't rubbing up against the belt when the engine is twisting. In any case, an easy solution is to just move the clamps to face a different direction.
Update: I really don't think this has to do with the belt being too tight or loose. I decided to turn the belt around and set it to 1/4" or so to make sure it was like Binder said. I normally run it at this tightness but I really made sure this time. I went out tonight to meet some friends for some drinks and volleyball so I took my Z since it was nice and I wanted to see if my belt would incur any weird wear. I did a highway pull and bam dash lights up, engine powers down and I already knew what happened 
I coasted into a parking lot lift the hood and my belt is shredded and it decided to take out my cam sensor wire, of course my car wouldn't restart. My friend who is a Nissan mechanic and a fellow Vortech owner saved my a$$ and showed up to help me out (Thanks Nate). He located the problem and reset my computer. Luckily I didn't fry my ecu, it just blew my ecu fuse and I was able to drive my car home. I'm parking this thing until I can get this belt issue figured out. I'm going to look as my friends setup and compare it to mine to see if something is not right but I am really at a loss for what is going on. Hopefully by comparing mine to his something will jump out. I don't think this is a flexing issue, I don't think this is a tightness issue and I'm 99% positive that the belt is not hanging over a pulley and it is lined up pretty well. I'll know more once I compare our setups but for something that is so simple this seems like a pretty crazy problem. I'll update things when I know more but any advice in the meantime would be much appreciated. Oh and I will be making sure to extend and re-route that damn cam sensor wire so it's not sitting there exposed right next to my cog pulley!
I coasted into a parking lot lift the hood and my belt is shredded and it decided to take out my cam sensor wire, of course my car wouldn't restart. My friend who is a Nissan mechanic and a fellow Vortech owner saved my a$$ and showed up to help me out (Thanks Nate). He located the problem and reset my computer. Luckily I didn't fry my ecu, it just blew my ecu fuse and I was able to drive my car home. I'm parking this thing until I can get this belt issue figured out. I'm going to look as my friends setup and compare it to mine to see if something is not right but I am really at a loss for what is going on. Hopefully by comparing mine to his something will jump out. I don't think this is a flexing issue, I don't think this is a tightness issue and I'm 99% positive that the belt is not hanging over a pulley and it is lined up pretty well. I'll know more once I compare our setups but for something that is so simple this seems like a pretty crazy problem. I'll update things when I know more but any advice in the meantime would be much appreciated. Oh and I will be making sure to extend and re-route that damn cam sensor wire so it's not sitting there exposed right next to my cog pulley!
Last edited by 350Z400rwhp; May 14, 2010 at 08:21 PM.
that's definitely not from an odd wear angle. something is attacking it and you need to find out what. like quoted, those worm gear clamps can come really close to it.
What do you guys mean by worm gear clamp? Thanks for the idea, the engine may be moving it into something when it twists. The belt damage does seem like it's happening on the inside of the belt though (teeth side).
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the worm gear clamps on teh intake pipe right next to it.
also, that belt is worn only on 1 side which means something is rubbing only on 1 side. Check the tensioner pulley. It has a lip on both sides so maybe that side of the belt that is torn is getting chewed from the tensioner pulley. That or something is moving around and close to the belt and when you get on it nad the belt tightens it tightens enough to cause it to rub.
also, that belt is worn only on 1 side which means something is rubbing only on 1 side. Check the tensioner pulley. It has a lip on both sides so maybe that side of the belt that is torn is getting chewed from the tensioner pulley. That or something is moving around and close to the belt and when you get on it nad the belt tightens it tightens enough to cause it to rub.
Compared my setup with my friend's today and found out I'm missing a bolt on my bracket. It is a very small one (one of the three small bolts that go on the right side of the bracket and the one that requires the smallest spacer, about the size of a washer) this may or may not make much of a difference but this bolt needs to be replaced. My friend has his cog belt fairly tight and even though I think his is too tight he has yet to have any issues with his. So I'm thinking I may have been actually putting mine on too loose as I put it on very loose yesterday and observed the cog belt "flopping" even while it was at idle speed. So my next step is to replace the missing bolt along with the spacer and buy about 4 belts and trial and error with putting them on tighter and tighter (Also making a protective cover for the two wire harnesses so a cog belt failure no longer can take out any wires). I think I finally had the belt on properly yesterday with the 1/4" deflection needed (I bet the amount of deflection I previously had was about 1") but the belt was already damaged and just gave out. As for my supercharger being loose 05Z33, I checked that yesterday and all bolts are solid, I even locktighted them when I installed my supercharger.
ya, that 1 bolt missing is huge.
those are only 6mm threads so for stability there are 3 of them. Also when that spacer isn't there that leaves a gap behind the plate allowing it to move which is no good. It's probably moving just enough to rub that belt against something when you WOT.
those are only 6mm threads so for stability there are 3 of them. Also when that spacer isn't there that leaves a gap behind the plate allowing it to move which is no good. It's probably moving just enough to rub that belt against something when you WOT.
ya, that 1 bolt missing is huge.
those are only 6mm threads so for stability there are 3 of them. Also when that spacer isn't there that leaves a gap behind the plate allowing it to move which is no good. It's probably moving just enough to rub that belt against something when you WOT.
those are only 6mm threads so for stability there are 3 of them. Also when that spacer isn't there that leaves a gap behind the plate allowing it to move which is no good. It's probably moving just enough to rub that belt against something when you WOT.
Mine was missing one of them so i just purchased one from a local hardware store for a few cents. I had the spacer though.
anyways, you can find the length of spacers and the bolt sizes and lengths in the manual. There are pdf manuals everywhere online so it'll be easy to check.
Hey str8dum1, I blew my ecu fuse when I shredded my belt and took out the cam sensor wire. I replaced the fuse and now my car starts and runs, did I possibly do damage like yours to my ecu or did I just get lucky?
Last edited by 350Z400rwhp; May 16, 2010 at 10:04 PM.
You can 't tell until you repair the connector/wires that were damaged. If you repair the wires and the code clears, you are good to go. If you do the repairs and the code will still not clear, you probably have ecu damage.