Pulley alignment

I have a really weird one. My alternator pulley and A/C pulley are slightly out of line with my power pulley. I'm thinking if I could take the power pulley off and put some kind of 1/8" spacer behind the power pulley it would force the power pulley out a little more and then all three would line up perfectly.

Am I crazy?? Is this possible? Currently the belts slowly erode a little bit on the edge because of the slight misalignment. Is my solution likely to cause more problems then it solves? I just don't know if this is really worth doing or if I would cause some other problem I'm not aware of. Am I worrying about something that is normal?

Power Pulley ? are you referring to the crankshaft pulley ? I recall a ferw projects back, I had to shave a 1/16th or so off the rear of an aftermarket aluminum crank pulley to get it to seat on the crank shaft and align properly.
Adding some sort of shim stock to bring out a pulley might cause an out of balance situation.

Steve,
Two or three days ago, I did just that. My (power) pulley wasn't being compressed by the crank bolt, which just left the pulley loose on the shaft, and made a terrible racket. I took a washer, and had a guy bore it out to slip over the crank, and put a slot in it for the key. My pulley lined up better, didn't hit the tin, and quited down quite a bit. Works fine! Of course, I asked here first...
-Tim

The alternator pully is aligned using spacer washers on the fan assembly. I would work with that first. I do not know if the same is possible for the compressor though

When you buy a sand seal pulley you usually get shims for the alternator and crank pulley. The sand seal pulley needs to be shimmed out to clear the sand seal and then the alternator pulley needs to be shimmed out to match the final location of the sand seal pulley. Most of the aftermarket places should be able to sell you a shim kit. Or you could just use washers with a notch for the key way.

Let me clarify something.......the crank (power) pulley is acually inside of the alternator and the A/C by about the same amount. It is very slight, but I'm thinking why not make it perfect?? I would need to bring the crank (power) pulley out away from the engine in order to make it line up with the other two. I don't see any shims on anything? Who would carry shims for the power pulley?? And are they a standard diameter opening or do I need to measure it?

Steven,

I've never run into an alignment situation where the crank pulley was the problem, not saying it isn't a genuine so I'll suggest that after the other pulley alignments have been attended to you could......... as a last resort, slice off a piece of a stock pulley and use that as a shim but ....watch that you are able to secure it with the crank key as you would with the pulley..never have done this so this is strictly theory :)

Alan M

CB sells sand seal pulleys that come with shims. They may sell the shims separately; you will need to call to find out.

The shims do exactly what you want and fit between the crank and the pulley so the pulley is spaced out from the case a bit more.

My crank pulley was out of alignment with the alternator/generator/fan pulley, so I had a shim put behind the crank pulley to move it out a bit. My fan belt still rubs a little on the fan, but not as much now. The engine builder supplied the shim, so I guess it's okay to do that, as long as everything is secure.

You can see in this 'before' picture the black ring left by the fan belt rubbing against the fan body.

I thought I'd share a followup experience to let you know my shimming the power-pulley suaray didn't work out as planned. I have a rear 'sand-seal' type kit on mine, where the oil seal rides on the o.d. of the pulley shank. I put a .110" shim between the pulley and the rear bearing, and that's where I left my last reply here. Over last weekend, I generated a profuse oil leak which at its height, coated the engine compartment with oil. What had happened was that the tension of the belt on the pulley caused the pulley to 'lope' or run out of true, since there wasn't as much pulley on the crankshaft. This action caused the oil seal to back out of the crank case onto the newly provided space between it and the pulley. Oil was everywhere!! I had to remove the spacer, and lathe cut the back face of the pulley so it wouldn't rub the tin (another story!). The pulley runs true now, and I'm down to 3 or 4 oil leaks !! I hate having to park over a board...
-Time

Steve.

I had the same issue with an engine we built with sand seal pulley too far in for the a/c and alt. We discussed shimming and or machining but thought that might open a can of worms. The 'correct solution is using a stock or 356 crank pulley in the build.

I ended up pulling the a/c. For reasons other than the pulley.

Jim

All four (!) aftermarket pulleys I've run (on two cars) have rubbed on the tin when hot. I was too cheap to machine any of them, so I took the belt off, got a flat file, rolled up my sleeves (you can see where I'm going with this)... and started the car. I take off probably 1/8- 1/4" of aluminum off the engine side of the pulley using the engine as my lathe, and viola- no more screetchy she makes. Don't try this at home if you tend to have bad accidents and then sue the guy who told you how to do it... but, it worked for me.

Stan,

Yikes alive! If that file had caught and tore from your hands you would have had a tough time explining to the emergency room how that file was stuck in your forehead. Don't try that at home might be a prudent thing to say.

Bruce

Here in the bay area, most guys hold the file behind their back, then if it slips, and rams up their rear........there are no questions in the emergency room.....sorry, i am sooooo politically incorrect .

Yeah, I knew that was coming...

Stan: sounds like you do some of your work the same way I do......think I'll leave it at that.

After doing my oil cooler conversion, I had to "modify" the little tin behind the pulley to clear the oil return fitting, and the modification tended to distort the tin (too big a hammer) so it now rubbed the back of the crank pulley.

I massaged the tin for over 30 minutes, this way and that, until I got it pretty close, then hauled out the trusty Dremel for the "finish" work to remove some of the metal and shape the horizontal part of the tin (as it fits around the belt cradle part of the pulley) to give about 1/8" clearance. That worked nicely, and I didn't have to have the engine runnig while I did it (sorry Stan - couldn't resist!)

maybe i'll leave well enough alone??? It doesnt take much to clean off the the belt residue that has been rubbed off and it doesn't seem to effect the belt in a way that would cause it to prematurely fail. I was just thinking if it was as easy as putting in a 1/8" shim behind the crank pulley it would make everything line up perfectly.

Jim would a 356 crank pulley with the a/c be available and would it cure my problem???

Ha-Ha !! - I didn't see that one coming, as I was already laughing at the mental picture Bruce gave me of a guy with a file hanging out of his forehead!! The lathe work works and was cheap, easy (got a machine shop or two here at work), and safe. Sounds like tim-rubbing is fairly common. I had to cut the little tin for teh oil return fitting too - just left a hole around the brass with ~1/8' clearance. Works good-no more rubbin.
-Time