billet pulley bearings,,gone bad

[Dave B.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am on my third set of bearings in 4 of my RPM OUTLET pulleys, heres how they seem to fail,when the car is stone cold there is a slight chirping squeek until it warms up then it goes totaly away,

however as time goes on the squeeking chirp takes longer and longer to go away until it does not go away anymore at all. we thought it was just one bearing but when we spun them and all they were all trashed, has anyone else had this problem?

[ausie]

Destroying bearings on the pullies, and after 3 sets, that sounds like a design flaw as far as materials used. Either the load of the bearings were not selected properly or that the RPMs exceed the bearing capacity. Something in the design is either not hardened properly or the bearing is not sealed. If the hub material is not hardened steel (including the inner and outer race of the bearing surface) they will not last long. Also, the mounting nut may be too tight which may cause the bearing to bind. If the pullie does not rotate freely once installed it could be a binding issue. The bearing will heat up due to friction and prematurely fail.

[Dave B.]

the guys at RPM OUTLET said that these are high speed bearings, my argument is that you may not be able to have high speed and high strength at the same time, what we did yesterday was to buy four new OEM pulleys and take the bearings out and put them into the billet ones, I am very dissapointed with RPM OUTLETS attitude over the issue as they are trying to tell me that I am the only one out of the 4000 plus they have sold thats had any problems with bearings, theres no way thats true, what are the odds I drew 8 bad sets of bearings, and its not the car because I am using there belts, the tentioner is in the mid range of its tention, and I even went from a 100MM aux-idler to a 90MM aux-idler pulley just in case the 100MM pulley was putting too much stress on the system, but that was not it either as we just put those bearings they sent me in about two weeks ago and they were already going bad when we took them out yesterday.

So putting in the OEM bearings may do the trick, there was a very noticable differance in the quality. there must be others out there with these problems.

[03 cobra toy]

Junk bearings

Get some from Billet Flow....

http://www.billetflow.com/IdlerBracket.htm

[Red03]

I have heard of people having problems with RPM outlet products before. And I can personallity tell you the customer service sucks. I think you should just cut your losses and go with the billetflow pullies, Doug has absolute the best customer service I ever dealt with. And to boot right now they are on sell, you just have to call to get the deal.

[Big T]

I think I may be having similar problems. It seems to happen b/w 2500 and 3500 RPM's. It sounds like a very high pitch "chirpy rattle". I can't tell if it happens at higher RPM's because my exhaust gets too loud. I thought it may be the belt because I had alot of belt dust. I'll have to check it out. How do you tell if the bearings are bad?

[Dave B.]

THe bearing problem manifests its self in this way, first when the engine is stone cold, when first started you will hear a squeeking chirp until the engine warms up, then for the most part the sound goes away,

after a while, as the bearings get worse and thats all they do is get worse, the sound takes a little longer as time goes by until they get so bad the sound does not go away anymore.

have you had that sound from a cold engine for a while? if not its more likely you have a slipping belt as that is RPM driven.

Do you have RPM OUTLET billet idlers?

[Big T]

Originally Posted by Dave B.

THe bearing problem manifests its self in this way, first when the engine is stone cold, when first started you will hear a squeeking chirp until the engine warms up, then for the most part the sound goes away,

after a while, as the bearings get worse and thats all they do is get worse, the sound takes a little longer as time goes by until they get so bad the sound does not go away anymore.

have you had that sound from a cold engine for a while? if not its more likely you have a slipping belt as that is RPM driven.

Do you have RPM OUTLET billet idlers?

Yes I do have the RPM idlers. I don't get that sound at idle. The only time I can hear it is b/w 2500 and 3000 RPMs. I'm going to check it out over this weekend. I'm assuming that I will be able to tell if there is a problem when I spin the idlers manually with the belt removed. I'm going to get a new belt just in case. I'll let you know what's up.

Thanks,
Taylor

[Dave B.]

I simply cannot be the only one out there with RPM OUTLET bearing problems,

dont most of you guys have these billet pulleys of some kind??

How about start up cold engine squeeks? until the engine warms up then goes away? No? anyone??

[93KingCobra]

Originally Posted by 03 cobra toy

Junk bearings

Get some from Billet Flow....

http://www.billetflow.com/IdlerBracket.htm

I 2nd that!!!

[Big T]

I checked it out this weekend. The pulleys seem to spin smoothly, but I did notice that the pulley with the bracket seems to have more play as far as lateral wobbling movements compared to the others. I wonder if this is causing the vibrating I hear along with the belt dust? I think it was like this from the start. Does this indicate a bad bearing? Is some belt dust normal and how often should the belt be changed?

[Dave B.]

Look, this is the deal with these idler pulley bearings,
if you have put any kind of miles on the billet pulleys at all, (1000+ miles or so)
if you take them off, put your finger through the middle and spin it,
a brand new bearing will feel smooth as a babys *&^%, but these so called high spped bearings after miles are put on them feel like they have been buried in sand for a week, you know, real gritty feeling, not smooth,

whats going on is these high spped bearings cannot take the stress that supercharger and belt tensioner put on them, yea they can spin fast, and if there were not high pressure forces on them I am sure they would work great and last a long time.

Now take a stock OEM pulley with the OEM bearing that comes in it, its very smooth but does not spin but maybe a turn or so, where the high speed bearings spin many times,

Whats going on is the OEM bearings are made to be strong, so I am afraid boys and girls that we must take billet pulleys, buy stock pulleys and put those OEM bearings in the billets, thats what I have done,,,over and out.