I know there's a few of you guys running 10 rib belt setups for your blowers. Have any of you have issues with bearings or anything from the extra side loading of the accessories?

 

I had to run a 12 rib set up to prevent slippage and yes it did cause some main bearing wear only after around 5000 miles, wish I would of taken pics of the bearings...

 

What made you notice? Did you start to lose oil pressure or something? I wonder how much extra force a 12 rib puts out over a 10 rib.

 

No loss of oil pressure, I was just worried about the crank because the belt had to be extremely tight or I would get belt slippage, I did not think that this could be good and the talk about parasitic drive loss interested me in a turbo,and the cost of the 12 rib belt at a $100.00 a pop. I pulled the motor just to check the bearings out, thats how I found out about the wear, A friend of mine has a 67 stang with a 427 supercharged and he said that he was having to change out the mains app every 10,000 miles...

 

It can't be good. We need someone to come up with a fan clutch type engagement

 

Hmm...I thought one of the advantages to more ribs was that you didn't have to have a super-tight belt.

 

yeah, after looking at mine i planned to loosen it just a hair today. No need to put that much stress on the bearings if its not slipping

 

Thanks for the info guys...I decided to go 8 rib instead of 10. I'd rather have some belt slip than have to replace the main bearings every 10k miles.

 

i think you have that backwards? Going with a 10-rib allows you to keep the belt looser before slipping, with the 8-rib you actually have to tighten the **** out of it. I loosened my 10rib today so i can rotate it about 90* and still no slip, i think a 8-rib would be slipping in that case

 

But there's the tradeoff that a 10 rib puts more side load on all of the pulleys too. I don't know which is better.