Yes, I noticed that as well. All ace kits have the idler repositioned to the lower spot and not in place of a bolt for that upper brace.

Also, I only sent the ace kit out with anodized black drive pulleys on the jack shaft. Why is yours silver?

Maybe it didn't, I'm not sure. I suspect it's possible with the ACE kit configuration though. I tried to move the tensioner to that very bottom bolt hole and the RPM belt was about 1" too short. When I talked to Aaron and asked how he did it, the tensioner doesn't use that lower bolt hole but some new hole some where between the two. If I had to take a wild guess that would be right about that 1" difference needed to run the RPM belt. I'm jealous.

I agree with being amazed by how much belt slip I'm getting. I have followed your build for quite some time and gave me the confidence with this kit. I'll be following your next build as well:happydance:

Great catch about the location of the tensioner! The first pic was when I got the car back from the initial install. The second is when I got it back after the first service of the Supercharger and I had some boost loss. They said the belt was slipping and changed out the serpentine belt and must have moved the tensioner. I would assume that they used whatever belts came with the kit but I may be wrong.

I definitely see the difference now with the placement of the idler. I have no idea why the drive pulley on the jack shaft is silver. Is it possible to get the correct pulley and belts thru you?

I appreciate you following my build and with it helping you with your build. I almost wonder if your OEM tensioner might be maxed out due to the belt being too tight and isn't taking up the slack anymore or if the tensioner got damaged for the same reason. Before I switched over to Topgunz's tensioner pulley, I was using another fabricators set up which ended up damaging 2 idler pulleys and my OEM tensioner due to my tensioner being maxed out.

I never sent any RPM belts with the ACE kit. I do however send them with the Rotrex. Turns out the RPM belts actually have a big variance in length over the standard belts, even if they have the same number/length. On the Rotrex kits the RPM belt on the supercharger will have a ton of clearance and can be placed on without even touching a pulley. The regular 10 rib belt needs to be rolled on and is a challenge. Theres like over an inch of difference.

If you run the setup I sent with the ACE kit then the idler should be on the bottom with the K071065.

If your shop changed that and moved the idler to the top then your belt should be the K071045

I am unsure what size your silver pulley is. I am guessing they also changed this and thats why your boost is so low. The ACE kit will consistently make 14-15psi with the setup I send. You should go measure that pulley.

So I measured across the face of the silver pulley and it appears to be 2.75 in. in diameter. I also noticed that in the install instructions there seems to be a silver pulley as you can see in the pic and in the pic later in the instructions it shows a black pulley. Not sure if you switched pulleys at some point during an upgrade of this kit. I'm wondering if my OEM tensioner pulley needs to be replaced but I also see that Redondoaveb had mentioned that you may have a different tensioner pulley available?

I also plan on getting the K071065 belt and put the idler back to the bottom position.

Topgunz doesn't have a different tensioner pulley available that I'm aware of. I did mention the OEM tensioner. Not sure if that's where you might have mistaken it as me saying a different tensioner pulley. The silver pulley should be a 2.87", that's the 9lb pulley. 2.75" I believe would be a 10lb (Aaron can verify that). I assume his kit was shipped with the 9lb (2.87).

I just measured the pulley again with a digital micrometer and it is 2.74". I'm beginning to believe that the kit may have come with the wrong pulley. I did order a new Oem tensioner as well.

That's interesting. Maybe they came with the 10lb pulley. What belt # is on there?

I would install the correct pulley on there also
https://conceptzperformance.com/stil...13_p_19055.php

There's a chance the incorrect pulley got put on and I never caught it. When those ace kits went on sale it was a tidal wave.

Let's get you figured out bud. I'll send you a "9psi" pulley that comes with the kits that are 2.85". I'll also send you a new K071065 belt. All on me. Just move that pulley back down to that position on the bottom.

PM or call me and I'll explain how to remove it easily so you don't have to take it to a shop.

Not sure what belt is on there now. Couldn't get it to stop in a place that I can see the numbers. I guess I'll find out when I take it off. What I do know is that the idler pulley was in the correct spot, with the correct belt upon the initial installation. When I brought it back in for the first 2500 mile service I was noticing boost loss. At that time, they (RT Tuning) said the belt was slipping and changed out the belt. At that same time, they must have had to move the idler pulley in order to install the new belt. I'm gonna reach out to RT Tuning tomorrow to verify.

Thank you for your assistance! I'll reach out to you tomorrow.

I'm guessing they only had the K071045 in stock and knew they could move that pulley up to make it work. That's the belt that comes with the stillen kit so I'm sure they had some on hand but the K071065 is selective to the ACE kit and Rotrex.

Certainly nothing wrong with the K071045 belt and the pulley in the upper position as long as the 9lb pulley is installed. That was my set up and I never had any belt slip on the serpentine side.

Just a heads up: The Gates K080220RPM belts are getting hard to come by, every single "proper" distributor is out of stock and the only place to get them is a couple sellers on ebay. I bought a couple to hopefully hold me over until a new batch can be produced and everything is restocked.

I always kept a couple spares for that same reason :tup:

So I got the new pulley and belt but I did notice a few cracks in the belt on the supercharger side (I believe called the jackshaft side). I did order a couple of new belts for that side as well. Just wondering if there was a way to get to the tensioner from the underside of the car or does the supercharger have to come out in order to replace that belt? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks

The easiest way to get to the tensioner is from underneath the car

Aaron, have you had a chance to mock up a front bash bar?

I have not. The fast intentions bar fits up perfect though.

So I got the 9lb pulley on with the roller back in the right spot, replaced the OEM tensioner and installed the new belts. No evidence of anymore belt slippage but still only getting about 10 psi of boost. Did a boost leak test and found a few loose clamps that were losing a little air. Tightened all of those. The only other leak I found was at the Mass air flow sensor. Extremely slight leak due to a stripped bolt. Will have that taken care of once I get it back to RT Tuning. At this point I'm wondering if it needs a new tune due to the pulley change. Any advice always appreciated.

I would for sure get a retune with a pulley change, you'll be making more boost earlier in the rpm range and also more boost overall, throwing everything off. Fix all the air leaks before really concerning yourself with boost numbers. Also, try a pull with that prefilter off just out of curiosity, I've heard those can be hit or miss. For reference I make 15psi with that tiny k&n motorcycle filter.

DrBacon - You make 15 psi with the K&N installed? That's seems really impressive. What are your mods?

Proper belts and belt tension. Unlike a turbo a supercharger is literally mechanically connected to the engine, it will always try spinning at a certain rpm relative to engine rpm, thus moving a constant amount of CFM. The belts are the weakest point in the chain and usually the limiting factor.

The K&N filter is restrictive, but not in the sense that people realize. That filter when clean is capable of flowing enough air to support 15+ish psi of boost but it takes more work for the engine to suck the air through it creating a greater parasitic loss on the engine. When there's more drag it usually ends up in belt slip and thus lower boost, if you can properly tension and use the right belts that slip is reduced/eliminated. This is why you see people gain boost going from a filter to a turboguard, it's not because the filter isn't capable of flowing the air but rather because the drag is reduced so the belts are no longer slipping.

You can have a filtered car and a turboguard car with the exact same setup make the same boost, but guess what? The turboguard car will always make more power since it isn't working as hard to pump the air. Boost numbers don't mean everything.

Thank you for the explanation

This is true to an extent. SOHO and I believe even the Ace kit was offered with a turboguard not because of belt slip. They were offered because more airflow equals more power. A good example is the attached dyno sheet. While my car was on the dyno, I had one run done with a turboguard and one with the NGR screen which has smaller mesh than the turboguard. You can see that with the NGR screen it lost almost 1.5psi and a little over 30 whp. There was no belt slip. It was due to air restriction.

But, parasitic loss definitely plays a part too, that's why superchargers can actually be harder on a motor than turbochargers. The motor has to work harder especially when you start getting into the higher boost levels

I didn't go into much detail but that was effectively my point when I said a clean k&n filter is capable of flowing enough air to support 15psi given all belt slip is eliminated. Clearly that mesh screen you used couldn't flow enough air to support the desired boost. As the k&n filter becomes dirty and airflow is restricted one of two things will happen, the belts will either begin to slip as the drag on them is increased or you will simply lose boost. It seems around the 6 month mark with fairly often driving is when the filter needs to be replaced or cleaned to prevent that.

I have a turboguard on the car at the moment but I've never checked what peak boost it's making, I would assume it's still probably about the same.

You could be right about the k&n being capable of supporting 15 psi. My car made close to 11 psi with it and the 9lb pulley. Once I started experimenting with pulleys I went to the turboguard. One of the reasons I went with the turboguard instead of the filter is how much of a pain in the azz it was to change the filter. I probably should have done a filter vs turboguard test when my car was on the dyno.

I've dealt with the stupid k&n filter for a couple years now and I've had enough which is why I'm running the turboguard at the moment. I finally managed to find a fabricator (after several well known/famous shops said it would be too difficult lol) willing to make me an intake so the car goes in on Friday to get that done.

Post up some pics when you get it finished. Even though I'm going tt, I'd like to see what you come up with

Can someone please correct me if I'm wrong. From some research that I was doing and to the best of my understanding is that a larger pulley will reduce boost psi and a smaller pulley will increase boost psi. So if this is true the 10lb (2.75) pulley would produce more boost psi than the 9lb (2.85). Correct?

That's correct on the serpentine side

Thanks. So now that the new OEM tensioner is on and I have no belt slip, I'm gonna put the smaller 10lb pulley back on to see what kind of results I get. Just out of curiosity, what was your set up to reach 16 psi? I am limited to 93 octane so my next step may be methanol Injection. I was also looking into the Z1 intakes but haven't seen that much discussion on them. Any input greatly appreciated as always.

I had the 9lb pulley, 3.47 jackshaft pulley and 3.00 sc pulley. I was just under 17 psi with that set up. I had to run e85 at that psi but since I also ran a wastegate, I could turn the boost down when I ran 91 octane (I ran flex fuel). You don't have access to e85?

You're wondering about the Z1 ported upper and lower intakes? I don't think you're going to gain much with them.

E85 is available about 45 min. away from me so it's not really ideal. 93 Octane is readily available so that's why I am leaning towards the methanol injection. I'm gonna put the 10lb pulley back on now that I'm not getting any belt slip and see how that goes since I was making more boost with that one. I'd like to try and crack 600 whp and I'm almost positive that is not possible on just 93 Octane alone. Just a side note I measured my jackshaft pulley as 3.19 and supercharger pulley as 2.89. I was curious compared to the setup you we're running.

Did you buy your kit used? The stock jackshaft and sc pulley's are 3.20. So, your jackshaft is the stock pulley which makes sense as that's the one you don't want to change if you don't have to. They don't make a 2.89 so your sc pulley would be a 2.85 or 2.95 if measured correctly which means someone had to have changed it at one time. If that's the case, you should be running a 3" sc tensioner pulley instead of the stock 2-1/2" in order to take up the additional belt slack that going with a 2.85 or 2.95 is going to cause.