I've wanted to do an autotensioner for my procharger setup forever. While building engine #4 for my car I decided, hell, no better time than now. The belt is pretty taught and the tensioner marks on the outer diameter are where they should be, BUT if the belt gets too close I'll add a ribbed idler pulley and use a longer belt.

 

please excuss my ignorace, but what does the autotensioner's purpose? is it to compensate for the horses lost to drive the procharger?

 

Here is my Autotensioner for procharger, works perfect along with my homemade "bracket"

Tensioner
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/powe...ioner-ati.html


Bracket
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/fabr...r-bracket.html

Forgot: I removed the lower Idler pulley and kept the stock adj.pulley. This gave the autotensioner more room to work before the belt would "touch it self". Done that- been there

 

Looks badass AC!

 

the autotensioner is so that it'll keep constant pressure on the belt instead of using a manuel one where you wouldhave to adjust it every couple months when the belt stretches AC looks great man AC is that off a diesel truck or something my truck at work as one that big ?

 

Tom, yeah, the tensioner is the Dayco part number floating around. Thre thread that gta324 started Tensioner
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/po...ioner-ati.html
has the 2 different part #'s I've seen, including mine. The tensioner I'm using is from an International brand truck I believe. I'm going to see what happens if I use the old manual tensioner as a fixed position idler instead. I'm not getting warm and fuzzies about the belt face only 3/4" apart even without the engine running.

 

I tried that on the C4 I had, and it didn't provide enough tension.

-- Joe

 

anesthes, what rib # were you using? 6,8,12?? I DON'T want to go cog from what I'm reading and the side effects of using a manual tranny with that. I look at it though and see the autotensioner being better than the manual one.

 

On both my vortech and powerdyne I used a 6 rib, and both were manual trans.

The vortech slipped initially with the manual, until I changed which side of the belt it put tension on and then it was flawless.

The powerdyne I used the spring loaded auto tensioner and it slipped. Switched to a manual and no slippage.


Obviously too much tension and you might eat the bearings on the head unit. can't win. A really good BOV with large capacity is also needed, when I first started playing with the vortech in 2001/2002 I'd blow belts clean off shifting with the 5 speed lifting the throttle between shifts

-- Joe