Have a watch! These are going to be great for those that are modded, a nice upgraded replacement for those who need to replace a worn OEM unit, and a must for the 2300 kits!

 

Great video, thanks for posting! Going to do supercharger + cooling system overhaul soon, might check the tensioner too while in there (mine is a 2015 R). Been suspecting some belt slip for a while now, I have the older non-griptec upper pulley. Also see some edge wear on my belt.

 

Nice but too expensive

 

It’s not the actual cost of producing it but also the man hours designing and testing it

i am a gas boiler heating engineer in uk and I charge 80.00gbp per hour
people think you then make 640.00 a day
which you dont
then take out your tax
public liability ins
car insurance
van maintenance
tools
training
fuel
clothing
it’s endless
suddenly 80.00 doesn’t sound much
Companies have to develop test and find a manufacturer that’s all before they have even sold any

so saying something is too expensive shows a lack of understanding about the real world

 

It's not for everyone. Some people value price over performance and that's okay. It's definitely cheaper than a belt failure that takes out the vacuum pump lines and kills your brake booster though!

 

Fair statement but it's twice the price of the pulley

 

Pulley

 

Had the chance to test the famous upgraded belt tensioner from VAP.
For 599 not including import taxes (i live in Germany)
Long story short it shredded 4 supercharger belts from Gates it shredded the one THEY provide.
Messed up my accessoiry belt aswell, damaged my Vac pump for the brake booster and destroyed all plastic pulleys on the engine by melting them... after all the costs it produced they didn't even cover for their faulty product and acted like it was my fault for not running their upper pulley combo, blaming ME the customer. (The total cost of damaged goods was about 250$)
I fixed everything myself because i already knew to some degree that they wouldn't cover a bill from Jaguar which would've been in the 4 digits.

Now here is the the best part as soon as i went back to a stock tensioner for some "odd" reason no more shredded belts its funny how apparently it was the upper pulleys fault but then its kinda not.
I ofcourse told them all this but silence is all i got for the last 5 days

This incident has told me a lot about the team at VAP and what matters most for them, it's sales and not your or your cars well being.

 

I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience with your vehicle, and you're not happy with our product. However, I feel it necessary to respond to some of your allegations here which are misleading. I have no interest in getting into a back & forth with you, but there are some simple facts:

• You have fitted some of our products, and some products from other companies in an combination which we advise against and do not sell or endorse ourselves. At this point, you are basically doing R&D yourself on what does/doesn't work in combination. Your contention (in writing) is that VAP should be warning all our customers in advance that if they choose to make up their own pulley & belt length combinations that what we supply for our own products may not be correct.
• At no point have we stopped communicating with you, we have responded to all your communications promptly and professionally.
• You've stated that you're unhappy with our product and feel that it is faulty and we have told you in every single communication that we will happily refund you, or replace the product at no additional cost to you. We have also offered to do so in a way that circumvents our normal RMA process (ordinarily, a part would need to be returned to us for inspection and deemed to be faulty, but we have offered to ship you a replacement as soon as we have confirmation that your existing part has been collected.

Again, I am sorry that you've had a negative experience. We have consistently stated that we will exchange or refund you if you're not happy (and only required that you return the item to us.) We have consistently communicated with you, as we do with all our customers, to the best of our ability.

 

All my parts have come from Vap
i have gone this route for the exact reason above
i I have the vap crank and vap upper pulley and the belt tensioner
all 3 parts are designed and tested to work together
if you alter the dimensions even slightly eg upper pulley by a few mm smaller then it is no longer a tried and tested product
you can’t mix and match when performing upgrades there are too many variables
also misalignment can cause belt to shred
there is no logical reason for a stronger tensioner to cause belt shredding it would actually be a worn tensioner
did u test the free play when cold and hot as the belt tightens when warm??

 

Here we go again the same excuses again: "you don't run our pulley so you are at fault".

My last email was ignored and it has been 5 days since...
I will infact post what happend and share the truths with the world since you clearly want to make this about me and not about your product.

In no world does the upper pulley change anything for a simple tensioner do your research please it even had the right amount of preload and that's the only thing that matters if we talk about pulley size.
I also told you that the angle on the tensioner isnt right and its pulling to the back of the engine you didnt respond to that either
I also told you provide me with another Product to compare but you didn't because you know something is wrong and don't wanna admit it.(thats's how i see things) and so you get what you asked for...a honest review for your product my version and my experience with YOUR company

I didn't ask for much but apparently this is better for you.

 

I went ahead and even installed a tighter belt to compensate for the 58mm Pulley even that one snapped and we aint talking snapping at high load and or high rpm we talking 10km of driving and 2500 rpm and it snaps pretty obvious whats the cause if that doesnt happen anymore with the stock tensioner.

 

Also i have bought all my products from VAP and not just a few bucks i spent a total of 4k on their products always expecting good quality but getting treated like a dog over 200$ of compensation isn't really my thing also i said this before but nowwhere on their website do they say "only works with our combination"

 

Moral of the story VAP should not take a order if there is no specifics of the vehicle in hand,in order for the product to work, or put a disclaimer for the customers and pictures of what the product will work in tandem together and what won't work ,a learning curve is a result of assumptions

 

At no point have we ever ruled out there being a potential fault with the tensioner. We have offered to replace it for you or to refund you, no questions asked. However, when you first had an issue, you *Immediately* started issuing demands for compensation. Our official position is this: Yes, there MAY be a problem with the part. We do not know that because we have not inspected it however in good faith we have offered to send you another one at our cost, with the only requirement being confirmation that the product you have has been collected by a courier. That's it. If it comes back here and it's fine, we're eating that (now used) product. In good faith.

However, we cannot as a company, take responsibility for damages to a vehicle when people are choosing to R&D their own product combinations. We do NOT recommend fitting a 58mm upper pulley to the V8. We do NOT recommend fitting upper pulleys without griptec coatings. We do NOT recommend deciding that our standard belt lengths for our products will work with the combination of parts you choose. We do NOT recommend deciding on your own what belt length & combination you're going to try.

It's true, I have not responded to your most recent email, we're not going to continue to respond to demands. We repeatedly stated what we would do for you: I instructed my shipping department to arrange collection of your existing tensioner, and to ship you a new one as soon as the courier confirmed pickup. However, at this point we're just going to refund you once it's collected and we will not ship a replacement.

 

I mean they ask for your VIN so they know what car but yk.

I told them this exactly, that i've provided them with insight of things that can happen... and that they should now include this on their website!

If you CLEARLY state that i can't run this product with anything else except the VAP Pulleys then i could've understood the mess that i had to experience now but they didn't and for me to find out by completely destroying my car redering it useless for over a week isnt a nice thing.

 

Question:

If you find that the tensioner is faulty what will you do?

and if you find that the tensioner isn't faulty what will you do then?

Should it be faulty i am willing to take back my statements i have my heart at the right place after all.
But maybe you should compensate for the damage i suffered due to your faulty product.
If its not faulty well this will just remain as a reminder for everyone.

 

Hi Stuart, I was considering going with VAP tensioner but just read the above - I have the older VAP upper pulley before you guys moved to the griptec version, are you saying that the new tensioner will have problems with that pulley?

 

The griptec style is a better option, but no, I don't expect you to have any problems because you'll have an upper pulley size that we recommend and can vouch for.

 

Go ahead and send him mine if you are so concerned with 4mm less diameter i would be very happy to see if i get proven wrong and 4mm is all it takes