Installing Pulleys on your 240sx

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Pulleys http://www.unorthodoxracing.com/

Unorthodox Pulley weight

The stock pulley is 1.985kg with rubber 1.515kg without.The UR pulley is .755kg

I always wanted pulleys for my 240sx. Unorthodox racing has the only pulleys for 240sx. They are great. The stock pulley is about 8lb It is heavy. Trust me, I held it. Shawn who is the president of the company offered my acr to be the prototype for the pulleys. I agreed. After the initial measurements were taken and diagrams drawn. It took a 7 working days for the creation of the pulleys. My car is pretty quick. I have raced my friends 98 Maxima and I beat him up to 70 mph by a car length. His auto passes me at that time. After much waiting I finally had the pulley maid for my car. It is made out of aluminum and weights about 1 lb. extremely light. After the installation. I took the car for a ride. The initial pull is amazing! And as the rev. built up you feel no lag in the engine. The drag is almost gone. Every gear pulls like it were a gear lower. Anyone who is reading this, get this pulley you will love it. You will feel the power right away--real power you can feel in your seat. It is like intake + exhaust combined. My engine noise is lower at 65 mph. when I start the car the idle is a little low however it goes back to normal as soon as you drive. It will be the best 159 $ you will spend in your life! I cannot believe how fast the 3rd gear pulls now.

What are pulley's?

If you open your hood you will find that your engine has these small wheel type things attached to it which are connected to your water pump, alternator etc. Basically your engine drives these other accessories like AC , alternator , water pump. These accessories draws power from your engine. Pulleys are the small wheels which are connected to your engine and accessories which make this possible through belts. The stock pulleys which is connected to your engine which is the main one is very heavy/cheap to make for the manufact. Unorthodox racing pulleys reduce the weight of the pulleys by making there own out of aluminum and by reducing the diameter of the pulleys which puts less stress on your car therefore free about 10 horse of real power you can feel. Think of it as the best investment in your car this year.

The Installation

I rate this install around a 6.0 to 6.5 on a scale of 10 in difficulty. Probably the biggest pain in the ***, was fitting the different sized belts on. I ordered 2 sizes down on all 3 of my belts, and still had problems fitting them on.

Tools

Pully Belts New front oil seal (Part # 13510-53J11 on a 95 - $7.24) Jack Jack Stands, (2 is fine) 10 mm socket 14 mm socket 14mm wrench 10mm wrench various extensions wobbly's or universals 3/8" ratchet 27 mm socket (this one is for the crank pulley) or a 1-1/16" unit will work too torque wrench 4"minimum 2 finger gear pulley Crescent wrench, or assortment of wrenches friend, girlfriend, wifey etc.

My car is a 1991 SE with Hicas and A/C, so they may only pertain to this model. They also work with a 95 KA24DE

NOTE ** the stock powersteering belt on my car was a 4 rib design. I don't know if this is due to the Hicas running off the same belt, but the Unorthodox pulley comes machined with 3 grooves only. So, make sure you get the 503038 belt, which is a 3 groove belt. (this is one of the problems I ran into during my install.)

The Install

Jack car up in front, stick on jack stands. Remove the lower pan with 10mm socket. Remove the fan clutch and fan assembly from underneath with 10mm wrench. Pull fan out from below.

Loosen all 3 belts. The Alternator belt has a 14mm lock bolt on the tensioner, and the tensionor bolt needs a 14mm socket. It's kinda hidden underneath the upper rad hose, so a helper here is useful. The Powersteering tensionor also has a lock nut (14mm), AND I found out that on the Hicas models, you have to loosen a bolt BEHIND the Powersteering pulley so that the belt can be loosened. Take the 27mm socket, and crank the motor clockwise(facing the motor from the front) until you can fit the 14mm socket into one of the 2 holes to loosen the jam nut. The lower A/C tensionor is the easiest to access.

Stick car in 5th gear, and have helper stomp on brake pedal hard, as you crack off the crank pulley bolt. 27mm and a good breaker bar/torque wrench should do it. (side note... my bolt popped off well under the 135-150 ft/lbs it was SUPPOSED to be torqued to.......leading me to reinforce my thoughts on vibrations on this motor. This bolt will definately be checked more often on my turbo motor)

Take gear puller, and work the gear off. Don't try to pry it off, or you'll break the pulley... it's not that strong. Pop gear off, and do 40 reps with this bad boy..... it's heavy.

Change the Front Oil Seal now - take a flathead screwdriver and pry it out. (To pop it back in, scroll down a little bit)

I weighed the stock pulley at 6-3/4 pounds. The Unorthodox was 1 lb, 9 oz

Lubricate the Unorthodox pulley with some neverseeze, and work it back on. Have friend or wifey stomp on brake pedal again in 5th. (or she can continue to keep stomping on it if you forgot to tell her to take a break after you removed the bolt...... but by this time she's probably all cramped up, and cranky, and stuffed your brake pedal through your floorboards, and smoked your master cylinder....... fun huh ?!)

Torque the pulley bolt to around 135-150 ft lbs.

Reattach all the belts in reverse order, don't forget to tighten the powersteering inner bolt behind the p/s pulley.

Performance

O.K., we had done an install on a V-Tec Acura a couple of weeks ago, along with cam gears, and the owner really noticed a big difference, so I thought, well it should help.

Warm up car, and blast off for a couple of runs around the block.

First impression...........what a waste of $340 (Canadian), plus 3 belts and my time. Honestly, I don't know if it's me being spoiled with mega hp RX7's, race cars, or turbo cars.... but it didn't light my fuse on fire. The guys opened up my shop bay door, looked at me, and could tell immediately I wasn't impressed.

Final Thoughts

O.K., I drove it home last night, and to work this morning, and opened it up in 3rd and 4th gear. Yes it does SEEM to pull harder, especially above 4000 rpm, but it wasn't like it made 10 hp. I have a tuff time believing you can feel 3-5 hp at the motor. Sure it may have made 5-8 hp, but it didn't make me hard.

Is it worth it ?.... well as we all know, our cars are hard to make large leaps and bounds in, especially in the hp department, but I think it works. It's like adding the air filter, or headers,.....every little bit helps, and adds up. Is it worth the $200 you'll spend ? Well you're better off spending that cash on shocks if you don't have them. Will it hurt the car ? Time will tell. I'm on my last few months of running this motor, so I didn't care. I'll stick it on my turbo motor, but the pulley will make insignificant difference on that puppy.

Maybe the numbers don't lie. I don't do before and after test with the "G-Spot" meter, or Verichom. I go by my big butt. I have a tuff time about members ranting and raving about how excellent this thing is. Idunno, like I said, it didn't make me hard. But then again, as they say, as you get older.......?! haha

My only warning is: REPLACE YOUR FRONT MAIN SEAL WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR STOCK PULLEY OFF !!!!!

I immediately had a leak under my car after I installed the sucker, and thought possibly I had a developed a weird crack in my front cover, or something. For the $5 for the seal (you can get aftermarket ones, or go to Nissan), on an older motor (mine has 150,000 km), you might as well stick a fresh seal in, cuz you'll be peaved if you have to remove it all IF your car develops a leak. Seals always dry up over time, so while you have access to it, you might as well change it.

Contributed by: George Rogozin