I have run an uncaged pulley on my truck since they first became available. I just did a rebuild and one of the things I specifically looked at off of the old motor was the front bearing. (having heard the myth). NO more wear than any other bearing AT ALL. There was very little wear on any of them, as a matter of fact.

The cages were, apparently, not made, designed, or installed for bearing protection purposes. (see above engineer's report) Proofs in the puddin'. BTW, I had 39200 miles on the motor and race at the track ofte, so this is no mamby pamby useage.

I love these trucks!

 

This has been covered a hundred-gazillion times in detail, but in a nutshell....

The stock pulley is made up of several different parts. It has a steel outer ring that the belt rides on, a cast iron center hub, and a huge chunk of rubber that connects the two. The design of the stock pulley is to absorb harmonics produced by the blower to reduce noise, because the blower noise with a solid pulley did not meet Ford's noise requirements for a production vehicle. Because of the stock pulley design's hefty weight, the cage/bearing support was added to take the load off the crank from the enormous leverage applied to the end of the crank snout by the heavy pulley. The bearing support is NOT there to reduce upwards pull on the crank from the blower!! Ford uses caged crank pulleys on other non-supercharged cars as well, that use the multi part rubber crank pulleys to absorb harmonics. Our trucks use a spring loaded blower belt tensioner. Any extra "pull" on the blower belt is absorbed by the tensioner, not applied to the crank.

There are always two sides to this debate. People can believe what they want. I know my reasoning to be true because I am personal friends with the person that Ford outsourced to design the caged pulley for the Lightning.

 

Something I've always went "hmmm" on:

If you designed a pulley originally w/ a cage, tout why it needs the cage, sold it this way, and then all of a sudden stopped producing pulleys w/ a cage, now wouldn't that make all of your customers wig out and pretty much make you look foolish?

 

:o

 

How many caged pulleys have you seen on 5.0 Mustangs with cast cranks. They also run tons of belt tension with centrufugal blowers. I've seen 100,000 plus miles on those motors, which are not known for their extreme durability.

 

But only because I wanted it to look more stock. (for trips to the dealer etc).

I think with the number of years people have been running cageless pulleys and no documented bearing failures, it's safe to say that a cage isn't required.

Coldie

 

This is not my first SC'ed vehicle,,I love it , But just want to say non of the others needed a cage,,,,I have 22,000+ miles on my 3# lower pulley,,No oil leaks, no stress on the engine..