So I picked up an ATI damper, thinking that it would be a fairly easy swap. After figuring out all of the intricacies of the swap, I think that I'm still missing somethingorother and potentially have the whole thing together wrong.

I'm running a 99 motor in an NA car, and I have the supercharger addon pulley for the ATI damper and the 36-2 FM trigger wheel. When I got the pulley, I pulled off the dowel held belt guard, put the trigger wheel on the correct position, and put the belt guard that also shipped with the pulley on at the same time. There were only a couple threads of engagement on the 4 screws that hold the belt guard/trigger wheel down, which was my first cause for alarm, but it tightened down well enough so I assumed that was just how it goes.

After finally managing to get the pulley on the car, and everything tightened down, I noticed that the belt guard is literally touching the metal of the oil pan when you look at the bottom of the motor. It spins freely enough, but it's right on it. I assume that'll self-clearance any issues at some point, but that was cause for concern #2.

Finally, after getting the whole thing on there, I attached the supercharger pulley, got the belts all hooked up, and test fired the motor. Everything seemed to be working well. Turned it off, and went to declare victory and hook up the front swaybar, only to learn that the swaybar no longer fits. Apparently the ATI damper + supercharger pulley is slightly longer than my old setup, such that it now intersects with the swaybar ever so slightly. I could probably bend the **** out of the swaybar brackets to essentially "move" the swaybar forward a couple mm, but it seems like the third concern is the charm here... I'm using the fatty RB front bar, but I can't be the only person to have installed this setup before.

Did I assemble something wrong in the damper setup? Has anyone else had these swaybar issues?..

 

How much does the supercharger belt add to the length of the pulley? Mine's a 99, but there's literally 1.25 inches between the bolt head and the sway bar.



--Ian

 

1.2085", says my harbor freight caliper, for the width of the SC pulley, plus probably some tiny bit for the gap in between the pulley and the damper.

 

Give me a call tomorrow. I have a theory.

 

I think this might just be the way it is. When I measured it, I noticed that it has a ~3-4mm thick spacer band between the power steering pulley and the SC pulley, which my old setup didn't have. My old setup only cleared my swaybar by around that much, so it makes sense that that tiny bit of room has been taken up now. Sucks, and I potentially need to now offset both my supercharger and my tensioner by the new amount too, in addition to offsetting my swaybar.

 

I'm still waiting for a call back from Flyin Miata to verify this, but based on talking to Eric, it sounds like there's two different belt guards for the damper -- a thick one for cars with no timing wheel (early CAS-based), and a thin one for cars with a timing wheel. I apparently have the thick one (it's a hair over ~1/8" thick at the very outer radial edge), which I shouldn't. That would explain why I could get like 1.5 threads engaged on the belt guard bolts...