there was a bigger pulley to generate boost accompanied with a tune. It was from some little shop that refused to show performance of any sort. Usually a bad sign lol.
Are you guys serious that the stock pulley is ‘failing’? Any specifics other than the OP?
LW pulleys by JHM have been in place for 7 years on S4s/RS4s. Great little ‘every little bit helps’ mod.
If you think the resistance to LWCP from posts like yours above or boosteasy’s are bad, you should have seen them on the B67 S4. It was a nightmare to produce for JHM because the engine was externally balanced and the manufacturing of the pulley to maintain that balance was delicate to say the least. Everyone said that it was impossible to improve on the Audi design. Well, after selling hundreds of them for a number of years and flawless results, I’d say JHM silenced those doubts. Another company created an aluminium crank pulley for the B67 S4 (ironically the same one referenced above for the larger B8 crank pulley) that was not factoring in the BHF engine being externally balanced, and they made a name for themselves destroying engines as a result. That’s one of the reasons so many of us were vocal against that company when they made another foray into the crank pulley business lol.
it’s not for sale based on his post where he says this is a sneak preview of a product in development, however they’re usually 250-350. Not sure what goes into this one.
The 3.0T is a pretty poorly balanced engine from my experience. Lots of posts on AZ going “wtf is wrong with my idle”. You really feel the NVH when coming to a stop at a stop light, likely not helped by the factory motor mounts, which we have seen fail pretty regularly at low mileage. 034 has an upgrade available, but I haven’t heard much feedback and that discussion is probably for another thread.
With regards to the stock crank pulley failing, it also happened to infinkc along with the OP. Not a huge sample, but enough to raise an eyebrow.
If you read through the post, the OPs failed, there has been another documented instance on vendorzine, and mine. People also said in the post their friends also failed the same manner, but was not posted. All failed in the same fashion around the same mileage.
Side question, would taking 5lbs off the pulley equate to the same as if you were taking 5 lbs off a flywheel? seems logical as both are connected directly to the crank.
One of the biggest reasons for all the rubber and weight (on an internally balanced engine) , is because of of the NVH.
Audi wants to have a comfortable ride, and a majority of the people buying an Audi want to feel like they are driving a cloud.
People like all of us on the other hand will make the very very small sacrifice of added NVH (I couldn’t tell the difference in NVH when adding the LWCP to my car) for the added performance. Additionally in this case, the preventative maintenance aspect as well.
People add lightweight flywheels to their cars all the time. That’s attached to the other side of the crank and you don’t see LWFWs causing engine damage ;D
Calculators are fun. Reality is that feeling your engine rev freer is more compelling. A LWFW and crank pulley in combination really feel fantastic and while putting an hp number on it is impossible (we’re talking about reducing loss, not making gains) it is one of those things like LW brake rotors that people say doesn’t help when they use a calculator (even though the cars accelerate faster with them).
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Wow Saki. The gloves really come off when I comment about a product from your fav vendor.
Re HP I’m not going to argue newtonian physics with you- its record is pretty well established. Dyno tests for similar LW dampers on other platforms are out there as well and they showed what the value was.
Re Alum vs “a lump of steel” being cheaper from the OEM standpoint- I highly doubt that. If you read the original post, you’d know the OEM pulley and damper are a two piece design with a rubber column (prob vulcanized) joining them. There’s zero chance that’s cheaper than what would certainly be a cast aluminum damper/collar if VAG thought the steel/rubber damper was unnecessary for torsional damping.
gloves off? huh? how about addressing what I wrote?
who mentioned HP? and newtonian phsyics?
I get that you’re not happy that someone pointed out your hysterically bad argument but why not engage and address what I wrote?
Why is it that so often when an engineer thinks he’s right, he blindly thinks so without engaging…and he throws his textbooks around the room when people point out huge weaknesses in his argument. It’s amazing.
" I’m not going to argue newtonian physics with you"
Good…because at no point did I discuss hp.
Basically the crux of your post was
if Audi didn’t do it, it must not be worth doing - I showed you that this is a terrible argument, as Audi do things for a multitude of reasons, namely money, comfort, model hierarchy protection etc. I also showed you half a dozen other areas in your car where Audi didn’t do the best they could, again for those reasons outlined.
it’s too small of a benefit to be worth doing - again, I showed you that calculators are fun, however real world acceleration and driving feel show that reducing rotating mass in these cars helps, and then you pair a LWCP with a LWFW for example, it really changes the character of the car. While we’re not going to see it on a dyno graph, taking care of these ‘every little bit’ items is a good strategy to produce a totality of effect. i.e. if we replace the UNSPRUNG 50lb hood on your car with an aluminium one that weighs 24 lbs…you won’t really notice it, and your calculator will tell you not to bother. If we then do the same with every body panel…and the trunk…suddenly we’re seeing a result and the car benefits. But 1 on its own doesn’t really move the needle…does that mean you shouldn’t do any of them?
But instead you chucked your toys out of your pram in protest and addressed none of it, other than misinterpreting something I wrote and implying I was talking about hp? Then you really showed your weakness when you tried to dismiss my post as it was only because of my fondness for JHM. Reality is it was my fondness for this being a discussion forum and when someone gives what I think is crap advice, I will address it. Easy.
LWCP was a new product for the STi about 10 years ago. The OEM pulley was a heavy, internally dampened unit that had significant engineering, and precision assembly.
The technical forum discussion went wild… 30+ pages of arguments. Replacing God’s own crank pulley with an inferior LW aftermarket pulley was heresy.
Guess what? Bullshit. It was there for NVH, and (for the STi) possibly to help new car buyers drive a stick shift.
10 years and tens of thousands of pullies later… the only detrimental issue is a bunch of bruised keyboard jockey egos.
This LWCP is an arguement Jake and I have all the time. We agree on most things but not this one.
Everything that I have ever read about the front crank pulley(harmonic damper) shows that its not worth the removal. Basically there is a very good reason why Audi decided to not just bolt a piece of steel to the front of the engine.
Will you gain some speed from a lwcp? Perhaps, marginally. But is it worth the added stress on your engine? Not for me. being .0001s faster isn’t worth the money or the engine stress that a LWCP causes.
now on the 3.0t where you have a pulley failure, I could see some guys swapping over to it, but realistically, you just need to keep tabs on it. Every oil change get in there, slack the belt and feel for play in the pulley, if its getting loose, just replace it.
Every engine has its failure points, the 3.0t is no different, but I would most likely still replace it with an OEM unit.
running more timing than stock…running leaner AFR than stock…running more RPMs than stock…running without stock torque limiters…these are all more potentially damaging than running a LWCP, and probably about 20x so. Yet you do all of these and then some.
I agree that on a dollar for dollar basis, the LWCP is not really likely to be worth it. However if the OEM unit shows a propensity to fail, a solid unit is a great idea. Further on a car where you’re already ripping it apart to do a new serp and idler/tensioner…and you’re gunning for less unsprung rotating mass, shaving 5.5 lbs from the crank is a nice little mod. If we wanted the best cars to mod cheaply, we wouldn’t buy Audis…so worrying about dollars is silly. Your A4 is 5 times the price of what you really ‘need’…so why’d you buy it? Oh because you wanted to? And because you can? And there you go, that’s why many people will pay $300 for a LWCP.
The rest of your argument is similar to the other poster. Basically you’re saying ‘since Audi didn’t do this, we shouldn’t do this’. It’s a terrible argument, especically from someone who is changing his engine lol. If that was a better solution (turbocharging a stock internals 2.5 inline 5 rather than the TFSI or TSI) why didn’t Audi do that? I think you should go back to 2.0T. Or better yet why didn’t VAG just turbocharge the normal inline 5 when they made the TTRS and RS3? Why’d they bother using forged everything and upgrading most of the components? If you’re (Audi) only making 360 hp and similar torque…yet MEC says the base 2.5 from the bug will handle 500, why bother? Could it be that you’re making a bad decision by trusting armchair forum engineers who say ‘it can handle xxx’? Same goes for APR guys trusting APR’s 1740 kit can make 500 whp safe on the RS4. For one, nobody has actually dyno’d 500 whp so that’s another story…but APR did zero testing on their RS4 because they don’t own one. They pushed the kit out, and we’ve seen near half a dozen killed motors so far because armchair engineers said ‘it can handle it’ basically because the rods didn’t bend. But long term, you kill the piston rings, and render the engine a smokefactory. One company supercharged their RS4 (the only company selling a kit who actually owns one) and they have basically killed the 500 whp project because it kills motors long term. They could have just sold it anyway to keep up with the others, but they chose not to. That same company tested the fuck out of LWCP for the past 7 years and is selling this one with confidence.
Lots of these arguments run in circles and make no sense. You just have to pay to play as they say, and decide who you trust. I trust JHM. They do their homework.
It is a great little mod that makes the engine rev faster and easier. Just like with the rest of the crank pulleys that JHM offers.
For those of you that want to do the install yourself then I have some tips.
Get two M10 x 1.5 thread pitch bolts that are least 90 mm long to hold the core support on. The B7 and older cars have the low speed impact shocks that the core support would hang on once the bolts are out but the newer B8 cars don’t have that so you have to screw in two bolts or the special tools to hold the core support on. Otherwise if you just remove all the bolts then the core support can fall off the car and damage components.
The crank pulley only goes on one way. One of the eight bolt holes is slightly out of alignment of the circular pattern so that hole has to line up with the crank pulley holes or else the crank pulley will not bolt on correctly. Here is a picture to show what I mean and it is the top left bolt hole.
thanks for sharing jimmy. It looks like a great product. Always helpful to remove more rotational weight off the crank especially
when you have a supercharger.
You said you did notice a difference in the motor rev.
Wow 4.5 is still a big drop in weight and when you look at where JHM removed the weight from its smart. The further from the center that you reduce weight the bigger the impact. So the total over all weight loss for the gain of power is very well thought out. Plus you dont want to pull out soo much weight that you feel the effects of it in terms of vibration. That looks like a great unit.
