Hey everyone,



I wanted to share what I’ve been dealing with over the last six weeks in case it helps someone else down the line.



For about a month and a half, I’ve been hearing a noise from under the hood. At first, it was just a light, subtle sound—something like an idler pulley starting to go. But as time went on, the noise kept escalating until it got so bad I finally parked the car. The screeching had become unbearable, and honestly, I was too scared to keep driving it.



When I first pulled the undertray off and cranked the car, I watched the pulleys from below. That’s when I noticed a slight wobble in the crank pulley. My initial thought was that the pulley itself was the issue, but I couldn’t be 100% sure if it was the pulley or something deeper like the crankshaft.



Fast forward to today—I went back under the car, pulled the crank pulley off, and finally got my answer. I originally suspected a bend or warp in the pulley, but what I discovered was worse: the pulley was actually separating. The back plate that bolts to the crank had almost completely separated from the ring. About 75% of it had already let go, and only a quarter was still attached.



Basically, the pulley was hanging on by a thread, and if it had fully let go, it could’ve destroyed everything under the hood. Luckily, I caught it before that happened.



A little backstory on the part itself: this crank pulley isn’t OEM—it’s an upgraded pulley from Velocity AP. It’s only been on the car for about two years, so this definitely isn’t a part that should be failing this soon. My next step is to reach out to Velocity AP and see if they can assist me with a replacement, because this piece isn’t cheap.



For anyone else running a lower crank pulley upgrade, especially from Velocity AP, here’s my advice: if you start to hear any unusual noise, don’t ignore it. Check the pulley right away. Catching mine in time probably saved me from a much bigger repair bill.

I use my sharpie to make lines to indicate the area from what the crack starts and stops

 

Yikes!! I have a pulley from VAP as well, no problems yet. Keep us posted on what happens and what they say about it. Like your channel btw, haven't seen much F-Type content in a while but haven't looked recently.

 

Thanks for that. I’ll definitely keep you updated on what Velocity AP says. I’ll also be posting a string of videos on my YouTube documenting the process, so stay tuned for that. Since I’m at it, I’m going to go ahead and order a tensioner pulley upgrade as well, just to keep belt slippage in check.

 

Many thanks for the update. It's pretty thin metal where the crack is (Aluminum, right?) so it makes sense the rotational forces could cause that trauma.

Love your YT channel - Boss Level!

 

Do reach out to VAP. That's the first course of action. They've acknowledged that there was a batch of pulleys that had issues. Yours may be one. They'll know.

 

Thank you for always posting great information as well as your YT videos.

 

 

Lol thanks for the samba

 

I just spoke with Chris @velocity AP and he said that Stuart should be reaching out and responding to me soon. He was probably swamped from all of the other emails over the weekend.

 

Glad I went with the stainless steel version of the pulley VAP had back in the beginning.

 

I believe we have addressed this before in this forum. We saw a few pulleys present with this issue beginning in early 2023. A slightly strange one because we had not changed the design since 2016, and had not experienced any issues previously. Though our manufacturer here in Canada did not at that time have product batch tracking by serial number, we were able to determine that the failures were isolated entirely to one production run of parts and therefore believe that this was cause of these issues.

Rather than try to resolve the origin of the materials issue, and actually only when we’d seen this failure twice, we simply opted to redesign the part with some additional reinforcements. We had also recently begun working with a new machine shop on a number of other projects and due to our suppliers lack of willingness to acknowledge the likelihood of a materials issue, we moved our production to this machine shop.

We are happy to provide anyone who experiences this with replacement part, and although we don't have the ability to determine 100%, believe almost all have been replaced already. It’s a weird and frustrating one to see something like this happen after 7 years of selling the same design and no changes to the product, but we immediately took some corrective action that should over-engineer that section of the pulley to remove materials variation from the equation. It should also be noted, there are people who've had our original design aluminum pulley NOT from the affected batch who are closing in on 10 years with it installed 100's of thousands of customer miles driven, so this really is confined to an individual production run in a narrow window.

 

@Life And Projects By Austin YOUTUBE As I shared on your YouTube comments for this video, I knew that @Stuart@VelocityAP would get this taken care of. Based on your comment in the video, great time to upgrade the tensioner as you mentioned as well. Stand up company, that backs up their products. I am about to post a recent unboxing in a new thread....go check it out.

 

 

Is there something you can share that doesn't require me to go to youtube?

 

My post above should answer any questions you have.

 

I had already seen that. I remember enough materials science from the last century. I had a professor who was an expert in linear elastic fracture mechanics, and he told some interesting stories about failure analysis. I was wondering if there was anything beyond that as follow-up from Austin.

 

Essentially his video echo's what Stuart already commented to here and that a replacement pulley is on the way, along with an upgraded tensioner he plans to install at the same time.

 

I had the exact same issue. They had a bad batch. New design is reinforced/beefier. Give them a call. They’ll take care of you as they always do.

 

Hey everyone,



Finally got around to doing the crank pulley install I had teased in my last video. The crank pulley itself was a pretty straightforward job — nothing too detailed since I had already covered the basics before.



Where things got interesting was when I moved on to the new VelocityAP tensioner pulley. At first glance, I noticed the pulley was sitting at an odd angle. It only mounts one way, but it wasn’t lining up how I expected. My first thought was that once tension was applied, it might pull into the correct position.



After second-guessing myself, I went back to VelocityAP’s install video and noticed mine didn’t look right. That led me back to their product listing, and sure enough, I discovered the catch:

• Some of the older F-Type models (like mine) came with the OEM tensioner pulley that didn’t have grooves.
• If that’s the case, you can’t just swap the pulley — you actually need to install a newer OEM bracket setup first.
• Newer F-Types already came with the updated bracket and grooved pulley, so those owners can bolt the VelocityAP pulley right on with no problem.

So, long story short, I had to abort the install. Definitely disappointing, but a good learning experience. I’ve already ordered the OEM bracket kit (which comes with a grooved pulley I won’t even use, since the VelocityAP is going on anyway).



Next step will be installing the new bracket and finally getting this pulley mounted properly. That’ll be the focus of my next video, so stay tuned if you’re curious how it plays out.



Hopefully this heads-up saves someone else from the same mid-install surprise.



Cheers,

Austin


Here is the previous video showing the arrival of the crank pulley for those who missed it!

 

Please post the part number as I have the same car as you.