TRD URD PULLEY SUPERCHARGER WORN OUT, SLIPPING, MY OPTIONS

First of all my location is Denver, 5500 feet above sea level, so the supercharger performance is different than a truck at sea level and each engine and supercharger performance is a little different. Current motor is a 2004 with 130,000 miles replaced at
480,000 miles, the 2004 motor has a little larger injectors then the 1997 motor and has zero ping issues.
I bought my truck in 1997, added the trd supercharger a year later when it was available for sale. I have 530,000 miles on my truck and 500,000 plus miles on the supercharger.
The original supercharger came with a steel pulley and never had any issues.
Years later URD offered a 2.2 pulley and the 2.1 pulley. I went ahead and ordered the
2.2 pulley. I installed it and had no issues until about 30,000 miles and noticed that the center
of the pulley was wearing down. Come to find out the pulley was now slipping because the belt
was riding on the ears of the pulley and not grabbing in the center of the pulley because the center was now worn down and red coating was all gone.
I ordered a new pulley and went down a size to the 2.1 pulley.
Truck ran more powerful each time I got a smaller pulley and still was fine with no pinging at 5500 feet. Again as miles added up I noticed the same problem with the 2.1 pulley as it was doing the same thing, wearing out in the center and the belt was slipping again. So Bought another 2.1 URD pulley and same issue again after 30,000 miles. Bottom line for me is that the URD pulley looks great and works great but will
wear out around 30,000 miles. Most people probably don't even look under the belt to see if the pulley is wearing and slipping because loss of pulley contact. It's not a URD defect, It's
a defect that the TRD used a 4 rib belt instead of a 6 rib belt or more, but is made of a soft alloy metal.
So to address the problem I went back to a steel pulley instead of the alloy coated pulley.
My original pulley was steel and had zero wear after 150,000 miles. SO I had a 2.1 pulley
and a 2.05 steel pulley made for me by http://www.thehighspeedlab.com/index.html and couldn't be happier. Zero wear
so far, Pulley also is texture coated for better belt grip. The 2.050 pulley for me at 5500 feet
pushes 8 pounds of boost and pings just a very little, but to address that I
will be adding a snow meth progressive kit next week that comes on at 4 pounds of boost. The new steel pulley also is drilled
slightly larger on the front half part so it slides on the snout shaft easily letting the
snout threads to be exposed so the nut can tighten down the pulley.
So here's an option to replace the worn out URD pulleys or just make sure you replace the URD pulley as it wears out in the center and make sure you check the pulley wear.
My URD 2.1 pulley was worn down from 2.1 to 2.056 and slipping like crazy.
Check your pulley with a digital guage or look to see if the red coating is gone where the belt has contact on the pulley.
If I replaced my pulley every 30,000 miles I would have needed 17 pulley to date,
17 pulleys times 125.00 is 2200.00 or one steel pulley.
Here are photos of the worn out URD pulleys that were originally 2.1
As you can see all worn down and belt marks on the ears from slipping.
Also one pulley on the inside shaft has a notch worn into it.
These failures are because the pulleys are made of a soft metal and this wouldn't happen with the steel pulley.
Wayne 314-277-7414 at http://www.thehighspeedlab.com/index.html can fit you up with a steel
pulley or any supercharger repair problems, he has been my go to man for rebuilds and supercharger issues.

 

This is great info. I have a 2.2 Urd pulley and I would be interested in trying a new size if this one shows wear. Thanks for the info!

 

@1997tacomav6 Have you run any fuel mods with the smaller pullies? I'm at 5500' also. I'd like to run a smaller pulley since I've noticed a decrease in performance since moving from sea level. I've never pinged since putting in a 5 spd. I don't want to do any fuel mods atm. And thanks for including the info for your pulley guy, I've wanted to go a route other than urd due to their wear issues which are all over the interwebs.

 

Oh and since you've pulled a full pulleys. Do you have any tips on how to remove the pulley? Tools etc?

 

Thanks for the info. I was just getting ready to order a URD but will be getting one of these instead.

 

All you need to do is look to see if the red paint is worn from the belt area and if so it's starting to wear or is worn and if it's worn a bunch the belt will slip, you can see the belt marks
burnt in the ears from slipping.

 

Very simple, just get a small 3 jaw puller for the pulley and a belt strap wrench to hold the pulley in place.

 

Moving from sea level will be hard to get the same performance as the air here is much thinner, less oxygen, but your engine is a 2004 and my engine is a 2004 also, so same injectors flow rate, you can probably get away with the
2.1 pulley that is made of steel with out any mods at 6000 feet, it might ping just a little if you lug the motor, so better to keep the rpms up. I'm running the 2.050" steel pulley and it needs either 7th injector Kit or a meth kit, I'm going the meth injection so that the supercharger will be cooled down by 100 degrees or so when the system is spraying under boost and my octane will be 100 or so, I like that idea. Each pound of boost eaquals to 10 degrees of heat increases.
The truck runs fine without the meth kit with the 2.050 pulley but does ping when you get on the throttle so hypothetically if the med kit failed it would not Blow up the engine because it will run fine without it too.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Hey, I know this thread is a little old but thanks for the write-up! I have a 2002 tacoma with the manual 3.4 with a supercharger, 235,000 miles on it. I've owned the truck for about 5 years, if you really lug the motor up in the mountains (Eisenhower tunnel area, about 11,000 ft) it will ping, so I always just drop it down a gear to prevent that. I am thinking about doing the URD injector upgrade or 7th injector kit (I need to check if my truck is EGR equipped). If I do, I might also opt for a smaller pulley. What octane of gas were you running with the smaller pulleys?

 

No matter what with the supercharger you should be running whatever premium is offered locally (91-93)

 

I'm in Colorado too, you can run a 2" pulley if you go with the haltech stand alone which is the only way to get a perfect tune.
I gained 60 lbs torque 35hp in the midrange over stock ecu
If u want to meet up let me know, I have 60k on the haltech setup