Has anyone installed this conversion kit?

https://kraftwerksusa.com/159-05-4000.html

I don't really want to give KW more money for garbage parts & design but it's a cheaper option than ripping out my KW kit and going SOS.
Has anyone even bought their new kits?

 

You're right to be wary. This uses a wonky one off linear tensioner. Every car and trunk engine from the past 40+ years has a belt tensioner, and virtually all of them work the same way. A pulley at the end of an arm that rotates around a pivot.

40 years of refinement and many millions of iterations and trillions of miles of experience. Then KW bucks the trend and makes something completely different. What could go wrong?

For this thing to work it has to slide smoothly along a surface while a load pulls perpendicularly on it trying to jamb it in place. I can't express how stupid that design is.

 

So Ballade actually was the one to start this trend - they made a retrofit kit and then KW followed suit. These kinda work? But it's far from ideal. The KW "tensioner" is kind of a joke; they just added a spring to the pulley race. Ballade just had you manually torque it down as tight as it would go; KW tried their best to come up with an "auto tensioner".

There's simply just no way to get enough tension on the belt without a full redesign. In my mind, the only viable SC kits on the market are the TTS kit and the SoS kit. But if you're determined to stay Rotrex, TTS is the only way to go; several people have purchased just the TTS mounting plate setup and brackets. It'll cost you more than the KW retrofit kit, but damn will it work. I was consistently getting 20+ psi out of my TTS kit for a couple of years - never needed to re-tension the belt after setting it once. No issues with slippage or breakage either.

TL;DR don't bother. It's a poor bandaid fix that rectified the issues of the cog belt wreaking havoc, but the new issue that arose was the belt just can't be tightened enough to not slip because it just doesn't have enough belt wrap - you're going to lose boost. I think the cogged KW kit was good for what? 14-18 psi? Immediately upon switching to grooved pulleys I saw a lot of people lose a significant amount of boost only to then be making in the realm of 8-12 psi: unacceptable imo.

Check out the belt routing on the TTS kit for comparison - there's a reason why this works so well when you compare it to KW.

 

thanks for the replies guys! Looks like im just gonna rip it out and go SOS. Don't want to deal with a headache.

 

My vote is still the TTS setup. There's a thread on it. You can re-use a lot of the KW stuff in terms of IC/piping etc; you're just swapping the mounting plate and brackets. You'll lose a helluva lot of money as you'll need to sell that KW kit for pennies, and the SoS kit isn't cheap in comparison. But I will always support & advocate getting as far away from KW as possible.

 

stop talking about the KW kit and end the bleeding. get the sos kit

 

This. End of story.

 

Let me do one better - Supercharger sucks; go turbo.

 

I am working on a kw retrofit kit that will economically solve all of the kits problems.

Proper ribbed belt

Traditional auto tensioner, replacement can be bought from any auto parts store

More than enough belt wrap

Bulletproof mounting bracket - adds a fourth mounting point that is significantly stronger than any of the existing mounts. Reinforces weakest mount so it now becomes the strongest

Kit will consist of pulleys (replacements can by bought from any auto parts store. Part numbers will be provided), tensioner (part number will be provided), tensioner mounting bracket, belt (part number provided), crank pulley (bolts on in place of cogged pulley), sc pulley (bolts on in place of cogged pulley), pulley mounts.

You reuse the kw main bracket, and all its existing brackets.

I only need to build mockup of tensioner bracket, and make the crank pulley. Also mockup of brackets that reinforce the weakest bracket mount. Then produce a working prototype and begin testing. All the fitment concerns have already been resolved.

Nothing is for sale yet. When things get closer to that, I will register as a vendor here.

 

Hell yeah, and funny enough, you'll most likely end up beating Jackson Racing to the release of their supercharger kit lmfao (their mounting plate looks like a knockoff of the TTS lol)

Fun note; on my TTS kit, the pulleys are smooth. The only ribbed pulleys are the blower and crank. Earlier TTS kits from when @06S2k07Si installed his, have ribbed pulleys. I'm assuming TTS ultimately decided these were unnecessary, and my kit is proof of it - no alignment issues with the belt skipping a rib or any of that, solid. The off-the-shelf pulley & tensioner provision is an excellent design choice. The TTS pulleys are machined steel, but I can't see that being entirely necessary for a simple idler pulley that serves as belt wrap only.

Can't wait to see what you come up with; gonna be a banger for sure.

Edit: Have you considered utilizing a reverse-rotation Rotrex now? It's a relatively new development from this past year or so. You won't need to be nearly as elaborate with belt routing and double-sided belts. Truthfully I'm surprised SoS doesn't offer a Rotrex option now because of it. Take their beefy, bulletproof & simplistic bracket design (isolators & all) & just pattern it for a Rotrex blower. You'd be able to keep the aftercooler and maximize on boost potential. Interesting to see that if I could pull off a 21-22 psi peak with 3" IC piping from a C38-92, what the boost numbers would be with an aftercooler & heat exchanger.