NST Lightweight Crank Pulley

Micah

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you can tag me, and yeah I know what it is. Holla a @VitViper Also is that how you want to present yourself as a sponsor here? Pretty sure I know who i wont buy from
@VitViper - what is the basis for rexommending against a solid single piece lightweight pulley on the 10th Gen 1.5T civic? Have you seen it trigger a check engine light or limp mode? Do you have knowledge/evidence that the pulley is a a factor in the balance of the engine?

From what I have seen you are the most well regarded tuner for our car. Despite reading about others having bad SDcard issues with ktuner, I have been leaning towards purchasing a ktuner based on your endorsement, specifically due to the acclaim your tuning work has earned.
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It's not about triggering a CEL. It's about engine harmonics. Factory piece is designed to absorb harmonics. A solid aluminum piece will just resonate and make it worse. We intentionally put "heavier" aftermarket pieces on race engines which are designed for the extreme duty race engines go through to help absorb nasty engine harmonics.

And no you can't say "well this engine isn't a race engine". It's still an engine, working on the same principles. The OEM's designed the crank pulley the way they do for good reason. Take two of the same engine, run one with a solid aluminum "light weight" piece and run the other with the OEM piece. Take them apart after 300k miles. Show me what the bearings look like. I can tell you already I feel sorry for the engine that ran the solid "lightweight" piece.

The SD cards in the KTuner are easy to replace/upgrade. The cards & devices are tested by them before they ship and only a few isolated cases have we had customers have a bad one.
 
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Myx

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And no you can't say "well this engine isn't a race engine". It's still an engine, working on the same principles. The OEM's designed the crank pulley the way they do for good reason. Take two of the same engine, run one with a solid aluminum "light weight" piece and run the other with the OEM piece. Take them apart after 300k miles. Show me what the bearings look like. I can tell you already I feel sorry for the engine that ran the solid "lightweight" piece.
We all know no-one on here is going to run two engines simultaneously for 100-150-200-300k miles with different pulleys. All we have is experience to attest too. You have experience with this and have seen the negative impacts of lightweight pulleys vs stock. No argument there. I personally have them on all my vehicles. One since the late 90's (1997-1998...Unorthodox Racing Underdriven [Subaru]). No issues! Just don't do this modification if you are uncomfortable with the possible results. Same can be said with a tune on CVT. Or any other aftermarket modification for that matter.

Looking forward to your tune btw. I have an idea that I'm wondering if the Ktuner and/or tuning can duplicate. I will be sending you (And JR) an email after doing some testing and videos to explain the idea. (Kevin Thomas) Hoping to get the car next week but this is outside the scope of this thread. Will be in touch.
 

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Most people never tear the engine down and don't keep the car long enough to deal with or experience "issues". I've seen Honda engines run quite well even with spun bearings... the owner barely noticed a tick and still went and ran 11's at the track. LoL

I personally won't use the things on my cars. Aside from the risk of using one, there's zero reward. I've had plenty of customers come in to dyno and/or tune their car with all the "lightweight" pulleys, "lightweight flywheel" and "underdrive" pulleys and the cars literally make the same thing as another one that has the OEM parts. 1-3hp is in the real of margin of error even on the best dyno and I've never seen 10hp from bolting a lighter crank pulley to the car.
 
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I personally won't use the things on my cars. Aside from the risk of using one, there's zero reward. I've had plenty of customers come in to dyno and/or tune their car with all the "lightweight" pulleys, "lightweight flywheel" and "underdrive" pulleys and the cars literally make the same thing as another one that has the OEM parts. 1-3hp is in the real of margin of error even on the best dyno and I've never seen 10hp from bolting a lighter crank pulley to the car.
No doubt! I've seen the same things with my dyno experience. Vit we know outside of hp/rpm or hp/rpm some people wont either understand or care about any other chart that the dyno software is capable of showing outside of horsepower and torque. With lighter wheels or smaller/lighter wheels vs another........or lightweight pulley or underdriven/lightweight pulley vs stock, I think a good dyno chart to look at is acceleration over time. Or look at acceleration vs rpm. It will be clear the affect of a lightweight pulley....especially an underdriven/lightweight pulley. You'll easily see the car get in it's powerband much sooner than the stock pulley. For those that don't know, it would look as if you drew a ramp on a piece of paper for the stock pulley representing horsepower (or torque for that matter) then moving that same ramp towards your left for the underdriven lightweight pulley. The horsepower (or torque) would be seen coming on much soon. Measure the hp/torque over time or acceleration over time. When I changed my dynojet charts to this, is when I saw the difference.

All my old files were on my old hard drive that crashed (I never backed it up) so I can't post any examples. The examples I could've shown would've been with wheel weight/diameter difference vs stock. I wouldn't ask you post dynojet info like this Vit because this still isn't something that I'm recommending to anyone. But from my experience with looking at acceleration over time (with wheels, not pulley though), I could clearly see a difference. This is when I saw no difference with the hp/torque numbers.
 


Micah

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No doubt! I've seen the same things with my dyno experience. Vit we know outside of hp/rpm or hp/rpm some people wont either understand or care about any other chart that the dyno software is capable of showing outside of horsepower and torque. With lighter wheels or smaller/lighter wheels vs another........or lightweight pulley or underdriven/lightweight pulley vs stock, I think a good dyno chart to look at is acceleration over time. Or look at acceleration vs rpm. It will be clear the affect of a lightweight pulley....especially an underdriven/lightweight pulley. You'll easily see the car get in it's powerband much sooner than the stock pulley. For those that don't know, it would look as if you drew a ramp on a piece of paper for the stock pulley representing horsepower (or torque for that matter) then moving that same ramp towards your left for the underdriven lightweight pulley. The horsepower (or torque) would be seen coming on much soon. Measure the hp/torque over time or acceleration over time. When I changed my dynojet charts to this, is when I saw the difference.

All my old files were on my old hard drive that crashed (I never backed it up) so I can't post any examples. The examples I could've shown would've been with wheel weight/diameter difference vs stock. I wouldn't ask you post dynojet info like this Vit because this still isn't something that I'm recommending to anyone. But from my experience with looking at acceleration over time (with wheels, not pulley though), I could clearly see a difference. This is when I saw no difference with the hp/torque numbers.
I know it costs a few hundred but....

Before and after dyno sheets from install day would be the ideal way to prove the effects of the lightweight pulley.

Personally when i get around to modding my plans are most of the PRL pieces and a tune. I will get a stock baseline dyno and then have everything installed and get a dyno in on the OTS map, then getting tuned either through datalogging with Vit or dyno and street tuned by one of the local tuners my family and I have had good results with.
 
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Myx

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I know it costs a few hundred but....

Before and after dyno sheets from install day would be the ideal way to prove the effects of the lightweight pulley.

Personally when i get around to modding my plans are most of the PRL pieces and a tune. I will get a stock baseline dyno and then have everything installed and get a dyno in on the OTS map, then getting tuned either through datalogging with Vit or dyno and street tuned by one of the local tuners my family and I have had good results with.
I am not disagreeing with you. I think you may be misunderstanding me. If you dyno your car (This isn't directed at you Micah, just anyone reading this that may not be getting my point), get the raw dyno files. Don't just get the sheet with your results. If you dyno'd on a Dynojet, download this software on your computer ~~> WinPep Dyno Run Viewer Once you install this software and open up your dyno run files, you can look at your dyno runs many different ways by putting what you want to see on the x and y axis of the graph for comparison. Your dyno runs acceleration over time is one example. RPM over time is another. You don't always need to just look at horsepower/torque over rpm or speed. You have so, so many options of what you want to look at for comparison.

When I dyno'd my RAV4's stock wheel/tire versus light weight wheels/tired, the dyno runs showed no difference in horsepower and torque. Because I wasn't making any more horsepower and torque. I posted that info here for people to see ~~> RAV4 St0ck vs Lightwheel dyno results. **Most of all my old dyno posts have lost graph data because Imageshack changed their policy and wasn't free anymore. ** When I changed the dyno graph to show hp/tq vs time, I discovered something. Read Post #20 in this same thread. I didn't know what to make of it but it all made sense afterwards. With the lighter wheels, my RAV4 came into it's powerband (max horsepower/max torque) much quicker than it did with the stock wheel/tires. Mind you, my lighter wheels/tire combination was 32lbs lighter than my stock wheel/tires (A piece) for a total of 128lbs weight lost in rotational mass.

I am going to cut and paste my question at post #20 and what the guy said in post #23, to explain to me what I was seeing. This will apply to a lighter/underdriven (Or just a lighter pulley but to a lesser extent). This is from 7yrs ago when I was in my dyno'ing heydays. Showing my age here.

Me:
Hey guys,
Sorry...I don't mean to beat on a dead horse. Was playing with the dyno software and noticed something. Felt guilty if I didn't share it but I'm not sure exactly what it means. I plotted the horsepower and toruqe of the lighter wheels vs the stockers over time rather than vs engine rpm. I'm hoping someone here can tell me what this means. It is the same dyno info that you see on the first page, just plotting time instead of engine rpm.
Look at the horsepower --> (Old graph gone from Imageshack)

Why the large horsepower discrepancy when plotting this using time instead of engine rpm? The lighter wheels are showing 12-20 more hp to the ground at first then it combines at the top....however....the torque graph shows something just as weird.

Honda Civic 10th gen NST Lightweight Crank Pulley {filename}

The torque is showing about the same amount of torque to the ground when the dyno run started, then the lighter wheels start to loose torque to the ground the longer the dyno run was taking.

Can anyone make any sense of this? Does it mean anything? I'm no dyno expert and always have used the engine RPM like most people. Sure this other info must mean something. Thanks!

Board Member's response

Kevin, the horsepower is easy to explain, at least if the dyno models vehicle drag properly. But it also applies to real life. At lower speeds, aero drag is lower, so more of the energy goes into overcoming inertia of the vehicle as well as the rotational inertia of the wheels. As vehicle speeds increase, more and more of the vehicle's power goes into overcoming aerodynamic drag and less power is available to overcome inertia. So, the faster you go, the less lighter wheels will help acceleration, until at top speed, they don't help at all unless they are also more aerodynamic.

As far as the torque, that also seems fairly easy to explain. Because you have lighter wheels and so more horsepower was delivered into the dyno, the drum speed of the dyno should be higher at any specific time than with heavier wheels. So, the lower torque is simply because you're higher in the RPM range at that moment in time. I think that's why in your charts, the red, blue, and green lines show you getting off the throttle at different times. With the lighter wheels, you'd get to your redline sooner and let off the throttle sooner, but also because torque drops off as you near redline, that's what you see when you look at a specific point in time.

I used to dyno everything. Any little change on any of my cars. Insignificant stuff that people wouldn't pay for because I was obsessed with dyno'ing.
See my name here ~~> Myxalplyx Dyno Kevin (A lot of pages/links to old dynos I did should show up)
I didn't post a LOT of dyno info because it was just for my own pesonal knowledge. Like removing a vacuum tube post maf to see if I gained any horsepower/torque on a stock intake. That's potentially dangerous. But if I gained say 7whp from doing this, I know my stock intake could be improved upon. So I'd design an intake to at least get that amount of horsepower (hopefully more) And retest on a dyno as well as a dragstrip. It's not something I'd normally talk about because someone could potentially ruin their car if it ran dangerously lean. This is dyno'ing going way back to the late early/mid 2000's (One Example).


All of this is just to say that this is one of the reasons I am doing this modification. To bring my car into it's powerband sooner due to the lighter rotating part. How much sooner is irrelevant to me because I'll be doing multiple things to make the car lighter. Acceleration from a stop is highest then it dies down. I'm getting a CVT so I will be doing a lot of things to get it to accelerate as fast as possible, at any speed. I am just saying this so that some people understand where I am coming from but honestly I don't care because I've tested stuff like this so much that it's sickening.

What I will say though is that if you (Anyone) dyno your vehicle, get the raw dyno file. Download the WinPep dyno Viewer from the link above and look at your before and after dyno's in as many different ways as you can. You will learn a lot. I sure did. It's pretty fascinating. But to simply talk about it is confusing. You'd have to do it yourself and see. My days of dyno'ing are over because it was causing problems in my marriage. I went way overboard and was excessive about it. The dragstrip is my new stomping grounds for testing. Hope this helps.

BTW: Follow Vit's advice. Don't do something like this. It could potentially damage your bearings. I haven't personally experienced this but that's beside the point. The extra vibration will cause extra wear and tear. There simply is no arguing that point. Also, I'm not arguing that something like this makes more horsepower/torque. It doesn't! But I do understand how it affects acceleration. Just explaining to some folks so they may have some understanding. However, I didn't even make the thread because of that. I simply was asking if anyone knew the weight difference of the stock and NST pulley. :)
 
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Update 11/10/17 **DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PULLEY**

This is just a heads up to those that may be considering this as well as for my own documentation. I had the pulley installed today. However the side of the pulley comes in contact and rubs the timing cover. In other words, it does not fit my vehicle (2018 Honda Civic EX [Hatchback/CVT]). I will be contacting the vendor a little later today. Just getting the word out to anyone considering this buy at this time. Will update if any more info comes.

Also, posting this information in the first post.
 
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Update 11-25-17

NST and I exchanged a few emails. I was on the verge of sending the pulley back but I am going to wait. I'd like a 2nd opinion from my personal mechanic instead of the standard shop I use. I'd like to take some pictures if there are fitment issues, on exactly where it is rubbing. There may be a possibility that my standard shop was installing it incorrectly. Just using some patience with this. I am hoping it was an installation error. I have attached a couple of pictures NST sent me of the pulley installed on a late model Civic. Will see how this goes and update. Waiting on a couple of pre-ordered PRL pieces before taking it to the shop.

If I can get this pulley installed, here is what I'd expect out of them. I'm going to be pretty specific.
  1. 60ft time improvement of .02 - .03.
  2. 1/4 mile time improvement of .1 - .2
  3. 1/4 mile trap speed improvement of 1 - 1.5 mph.

This is from just looking at my notes I took of having one installed on my Honda Fit and Toyota RAV4. This won't be measurable on my car though since I'll be having a PRL CAI and PRL Intercooler installed at the same time. I am just putting the above information out there in case someone else will be testing this back to back. I've already experienced the above so I'm personally convinced and am just sharing.

Honda Civic 10th gen NST Lightweight Crank Pulley NST Pulley Installed 1


Honda Civic 10th gen NST Lightweight Crank Pulley NST Pulley Installed 2
 

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Have they fix the issue ?

Also, inline 4 engine, primary vibrations are cancel with crack shaft counter weight, secondary vibrations are cancel out with balance shafts, located under the crankshaft, all inside the engine.

Only crossplane v8 & v6 needs to add dead weight to the crack pulley to decrease harmonic vibrations.

It’s why when you search for honda parts catalog, they call crank pulley a pulley, not Harmonic balancer, because it’s doesn’t have a block of dead weight added to the pulley.
 


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Have they fix the issue ?
As far as they were concerned, there was no problem to fix. I never followed-up on it. The piece is still sitting in my garage.
 

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There is nothing wrong with running a solid crank pulley, but it needs to be of higher quality and perfectly balanced. Unorthodox Racing is the only one I would run on any platform. They do not have anything yet for this car model, but should in the future. Thousands of cars over the past 10 years of different models of Civics, Accords, etc have all run them without any issues, at all.
 
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The NST adv. claims that it is ‘Dyno proven horsepower’. Wonder anyone has dyno experience with NST lightweight pulley on Civic CVT models?

I am interested in real world experiences/data than emotional/philosophical.

If you have pulleys, please let us all know.

1. Which pulleys do you have,
2. How many miles have you logged before/after,
3. what problems/improvements have YOU personally experienced Internal/external noises?
4. would you do it again?

I am interested in better/improve acceleration (or a few horses maybe) and I like the idea of a set of lightweight pulleys to free up a few horses. There are debate as well in other forum but would like to hear pure experience from CVT owner. Thanks
 
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Still following…
Has anyone installed Unorthodox Racing crank pulley for 1.5T yet? Please feel free to share your experience, please. Thanks.
 


 


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