1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Bouncing Tensioner?

I was gonna say...

that if it's the idler, remove the belt and you should feel play in it if it's bad. FWIW, I think the idler is a cheap POS... But it is what it is. GT Tuning in England makes a very stout replacment, but like all his stuff, it's not cheap to get in the US.

Matt

 

I'm very curious to see how this turns out. I had a similar situation following my SC pulley swap, where the tensioner started bouncing around wildly with the 15% pulley and a new belt. Multiple pulleys and belts did not solve the problem Putting the original, 40K mile belt back on got things to be much quieter, but still not where it should have been. A trip to the dealer ended up with a diagnosis that the bearing dust shield on the SC was now worn, which necessitated a fully SC change (can't replace the dust shield or bearings, I guess). My '05 SC was replaced with an '04, 15% pulley already in place, and I've now gone 57K more miles with that set up.

Until recently, I was the only person I had ever heard up who needed to replace a SC following a pulley swap. Told the story to one of the guys from the pulley manufacturer at a local show last year, and his reaction was, "Oh yeah... I heard about this one. That was you, huh?" One of our local club members just had the same thing happen to her car (an '03) following her pulley swap.

I've still got my original SC, hoping to get it rebuilt one of these days.

 

You can get SCs rebuilt

by several firms now. Used to be that wasn't the case. I'm sure MINI would say you have to buy a gold plated brand new unit at a cost of 42 gazillion dollars or the world would end.... Or something like that.

Matt

 

Actually, the guy I worked with at MINI (don't remember if he was the service manager or just a grunt) went to bat for me in a BIG way, and found someone locally that was willing to sell his SC for $200, rather than the $2K or more that a new one would have cost.

 

Yeah - actually considered the GT Tuning idler when mine was dead, just too hard to afford & get across the pond.

May do it on my "new" R53 when it comes time...

 

No U.S. vendor carries it?

 

Haven't looked recently, but previously - no. Had to do the whole exchange rate purchase and ship across the big pond to get it...

 

Hmmm

seems like GT Tunings site is down now. I think it's 67 pounds for the part, and 14 for shipping.... That's like what, $127+? I'm thinkin' in might be good idea to make one on this side of the pond....

Hang tight!

Matt

 

I volunteer to be your first customer. (I'll also be getting some beehives).

GTT isn't thought of too highly on MiniTorque. Not sure of the reasons other than their over-rated tuning packages.

Back OT, glad you found the culprit.

 

Possibly..

but I like what they do. I'm not on the foreign boards enough to understand thier soap operas. The ones over hear are enough to deal with!

I loved the testing that they did on exhaust backpressure 3 years ago or so. They have good parts, and up till recently had the only intake with an airhorn to aid flow.... There would be a bunch of thier parts on my car, but the exchange and shipping makes them close to unobtanium!

Matt

 

Just a suggestion before discarding an idler pulley. The pulley's sealed bearing is secured with a thin washer of sorts. Over time, or perhaps it wasn't tightened well from the factory, it will loosen causing the wiggle effect. Try an eighth turn on the bolt, if it moves easy, go for hand tight snug. The washer deforms a little when tightened and my be a contributing factor, any way, if the idler isn't gritty or noisy when turned, but it can rock, try tightening again.

 

Just screwing around...

with some 3D modelling SW.....



This is probably to much to machine, but looks cool!

Matt

 

Sure!

I'm print out a glossy, and you can have your rendering of FES Vaporware in a couple days via USPS Priority Mail! It'll be 5.5 x 8.5.

FWIW, I didn't even dimension the thing when I whipped it up! I've been using SolidWorks for doing cool 3D modelling stuff, and it's totally bitchen! That took all of 3 minutes to do.

Matt

 

Anybody know the part # on the idler pulley bearing. I just replaced a couple idler bearings on a Mazda. Under 10$ for both bearings plus my time intead of $50-$80 per new pulley with bearings. Thanks.

Jeremy