Whipple 8.3 Belt Issues
 

Information Requested:
Anyone running a 8.3 litre Whipple supercharger with a cog belt?

If so have you had any issues with the belts?

I recently went to the Power Tour and did some fly bye's and the belt on my set-up was completely shaved smooth...there were pieces of rubber everywhere. FYI--- I run a Jason 1600 8mm cogged supercharger belt.

The belt looked like it was completely shaved of any teeth. It made a friggin mess in my engine compartment. I opened the hatch to see the belt loosely spinning around the pulley. It eventually slipped so much the engine died.

I then inspected the tensioners they were fine and turned the supercharger by hand to see if there was any binding and it spun freely. Adjusted the tensioners applied some tension to the bare belt to restart engine it fired up and limped back to the dock at idle. Note: I was lucky to have the tools onboard to make the adjustments otherwise it would have been a long tow back.

There are quite a few 8.3 Whipple motors out there this cannot be an isolated incident.

FYI: I run a 8mm cogged system as the previous set-up called for a ribbed belt and they had slippage problems trying to turn such large helical lobes.

Anyone have same or similar issues love to hear from you including any solutions?

KAP

P.S. I will call Mr. Whipple tomorrow but always want to hear from other boaters.

We run the 8.3 on various engines and have not had a belt failure. We run our belts so the tensioners are on the back sides of the belt.

The 44 SL I have run all summer has 70 hours and there isn't any belt dust when you open the hatch for the first time.

I would recommend going to RCD, and trying the gates powergrip GT belt and RCD GT pulleys (gear tooth profile, not the round tooth HTD).

I would not recommend a polychain, because they don't flex well, they are noisy as hell, and to quote BigYellowCat, after a days worth of boating, it will look like smurf exploded in your engine room. We have run the same 2 gates powergrip gt belts and rcd gt pulleys for 5 seasons with zero failures.

http://www.rcdengineering.com/

And what animalhouse said, put the tensioner on the back side of the belt if you haven't already.

You might also want to think about a different pulley combo (same overdrive ratio though) as to change how many teeth engage at a time and to change the forces on how your snouts/belts are loaded, because the snouts/cranks do flex.

Hello AH:

I have about a hundred hours on the belt and I inspected it frequently with no signs of wear other than a little rubber dust which is normal.

To acheive tension on the setup you need to have at least one tensioner on the tooth side.

I love my 8.3 but this latest belt failure has me quite perplexed as to the why and how it could happen!

KAP

Saxman:

Great post and informative.

I have the round tooth pulleys three of them in candy blue. It sucks to now change to another system altogether.

I like your idea and confidence in the Gates powergrip and RCD GT pulleys. I guess we must go through the evolution process but first I would like to find out why this incident occurred.

One of the tensioner pulleys on the back side of the belt was a bit wobbly but don't think that is the causation issue.

It is my lay belief that something had to stop for a second or bind up with the crank spinning to shave off all the teeth. I need to post a photo of the belt for you to get an idea of what occurred.

KAP

Here is a photo of the current set-up and belt.

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/c...511000913a.jpg

Only one tensioner is on the tooth side. The pulley on the port side [one engaged on the smooth side of the belt was the one that was kinda wobbly but usually that side has some slack so when I spool up it has room to tighten up without too much tension.

Mr. Whipple has been away so I will discuss further with him what to do. I should also post a photo of the belt it looks like a ribbed version now smooth all shaved down no teeth whatsoever.

KAP

Keep us posted if you don't mind?

I'm building new power, and planned to use the 8.3 over the 5, but I've heard about the belt issue as well. I thought they might have fixed the issue my now, so IF you have the time, could you let us know what Dustin says?

Thanks man, & good luck!

From what I have read, the 8.3 is the same blower as the 5, all depends on what rotor is the driving one.

Seems the 8MM rubber belt is only good for so much overdrive, then the tooth shredding starts. been thru it several times and upgraded to the kevlar or carbon belts. Only time I have broken one of them is by knocking the blower off or something running thru it

:drink: You TAFC guys are insane! :D :D

I THINK that the GT's are supposed to carry about 15% more load than the HTD's.... Don't quote me on that though.

If you switch to a GT system and get bigger pulleys (same overdrive though) so more teeth can engage, but you still tear teeth off the belt, I would say that there is some other serious issue.... The GT system and bigger pulleys should have no issues carrying the load of anything under 1500hp on a good sized screw blower.

Kinda like your Canadian WP...... :lolhit: