This is a Jaguar aftermarket supplier recomendation:

Powerhouse Automotive in Sheffield, England

RE: Smaller Supercharger Pulley

Jaguar Supercharger Upgrade | Jaguar Supercharger

After quite a bit of research on "best bang for the buck" power-adders to improve the midrange "punch" of my 2003 XKR, I decided that a smaller than OEM upper supercharger pulley was the way I wanted to go. After reading several reports that stainless steel was the preferred material I went searching.

Through a listing on eBay I discovered Powerhouse in the UK. I found their website and emailed them with some technical questions. My email was returned within several hours by an extremely knowledgeable and pleasant fellow (Lawson Smith) who says he also drives a 2003 XKR on a daily basis. Lawson and I emailed back and forth a couple of times and in February of 2012 I purchased the smaller pulley from Powerhouse.

The pulley plus shipping was around $180.00 at the currency exchange of the moment. Since it was coming from the UK and I was located in central USA - it took a couple of weeks for it to arrive.

Our Jags have the type of Supercharger (Eaton M112) pulley that requires you to either cut the old one off - or use a very specific and somewhat expensive puller to get the OEM pulley loose. So I took my time and researched all the options before I started on the project. About 2 weeks after I received the beautifully machined pulley from Powerhouse I was just about to start on the weekend-long project of cutting apart the factory pulley and putting the new pulley in place - when I got an emphatic email from Lawson. He said that Powerhouse discovered that the contractor that had manufactured the pulleys for them had machined the shaft opening of some of the pulleys too small and presumably, no matter how much I heated the new pulley, it may not have fit on the shaft. He asked me to measure the shaft hole in the pulley I had received.

I measured and was told that I HAD received one of the questionable pulleys.
Powerhouse express mailed another pulley directly to me.

That was the pulley that I installed. I was surprised how straightforward the removal of the old pulley, heating and installing the new pulley was. The only thing that was tedious and time-consuming was the resizing of the supercharger snout to accept the much smaller pulley. I didn't want to get into the process of removing the supercharger so I elected to do the re-sizing work "in situ."

That was a very long and tiring process... Life got easier when I found a little jewell of a tool for less than 30 bucks that really made the process faster. If you are going to sand down the aluminum snout with the S/C in the car PLEASE do yourself a favor and buy one of these tiny powered belt sanders:

Air Belt Sander

I finished the sanding, heated the new pulley up with an acetylene torch and it slid easily onto the shaft and tightened up like I was told it would as it cooled.

I bought a new Goodyear Gatorback 4080515 supercharger belt and WOW! Did this simple modification ever change the "butt-dyno" feel of the car. Much, Much harder pull in the 3000-5000 rpm range! So unless you are going racing with your local tuner crowd and planning on running 1/4 mile for "pink slips," I think you'll be real happy with this "real world" power. The efficiency of the roots blower drops off as the engine hits it's redline of 6000 rpm and the intake air temp is a bit on the high side - but solving that problem is for a different day.

I enjoyed the extra power for about 4 months but then when my car began misfiring due to a problem unrelated to the pulley installation, the inconsistent rotation of the crank (and thus the supercharger) caused the coupler within the supercharger to rattle. Apparently, that loud tapping and clacking caused the new pulley to start backing off the shaft (I caught it before it came completely off the shaft - but it did shred the drive belt in the process.

When I emailed Powerhouse, Lawson immediately made the decision that I must have received a second pulley that was oversized - explaining that their supplier's quality control was quite suspect during the time the two pulley's I had received were manufactured. He assured me that the situation had been resolved and sent me a THIRD pulley to put on my supercharger!

Since then, things have been resolved with the misfiring problem and my car (with the third pulley) is running great.

It's unfortunate that I got caught - as the end user, two times, with sub-par product, but I do understand manufacturing difficulties with third party suppliers and having to "suck it up" for problems that are not your fault. And I have to say, that Lawson Smith and Powerhouse did everything in good faith that they could do in this situation. They sent me three pulleys and only got paid for one. There is no doubt in my mind that this situation has actually COST Powerhouse money.... They immediately "owned up" to a possible problem with the product that was sold and went a long way to make it good - That is true customer service! You don't see that very often these days.

I would, and I'm sure I WILL deal with Mr Smith in the future.

 

There must have been times in the middle of this pulley swap when you wished you'd never started!

It's good to hear Powerhouse were so supportive and the XKR is running smoothly again.

Graham

 

+1 on the above and thanks for a great write up

 

Seems Like something that could be quite handy... Count me in...
Markee

 

Excellent write up. Just an observation but when I order anything from the UK it is typically here in 4-5 days. If I order from the US then it takes close to 2 weeks. Always find that to be a bit off.