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Reichard Racing tensioner question

2K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  Edmisten1 
#1 ·
I have one of the original Reichard Racing manual w/ spring assist tensioners. Still works great. I've never had any problems with it. But since you manually adjust it, the only way I have come up with to get it accurate each time is to tighten down the adjustment bolt using a torque wrench. But at how many ft lbs is correct? I know at 20 ft lbs, it is tight without being overly tight. I have also found this is close to the sweet spot for getting it tight enough to eliminate pulley slip with what I consider to be enough but not too much tension. Too little tension can lead to belt squeal/chirp. I can't find anything that address this with PD blowers and how tight to crank it down, but I did find several links talking about this with centrifugal style blowers. These guys were talking about using 65 ft lbs and all the way up to 100 ft lbs for their set ups. Seems like a train load to me but who knows. And yeah I did find threads where it said you should only be able to twist the belt X amount but again that is subjective and in my opinion not an accurate way to set tension. Point is, for anyone who currently uses this tensioner on their car or did at some point in the past with a screw blower, did anyone else utilize the torque wrench method and if so, how many ft lbs did you use? If not the torque wrench, what method did you use?
 
#2 ·
I would go back to Reichard and ask them, Jeff. In as much as it is their design, they had to come up with a target tension in their design phase that they were shooting for and wanted their customers to use.


Ed
 
#3 ·
I would go back to Reichard and ask them, Jeff. In as much as it is their design, they had to come up with a target tension in their design phase that they were shooting for and wanted their customers to use.

Ed
Agreed....unfortunately he has been out of the aftermarket Mustang specialty parts business for quite some time. Last I heard, he was contracting with the government making stuff for the military. Either way, I find no contact info for him anywhere. But yeah...wish I could talk to him for sure. As a matter of fact, on one of those threads I was reading on the centri blowers, the guy mentioned that he had talked to Reichard himself back in the day and it was him who said use 65 ft lbs on the adjustment bolt. Not that I have tried, but I bet going from 20 ft lbs to 65 ft lbs on the adjustment bolt would probably not even be a full turn.
 
#4 ·
I don't have a good data point for you, Jeff.

If it were me, I would start tightening at about 20/25 ft/lbs and see if I had belt slip. If I did I might begin to look for a ThumpRRR tensioner. A manual tensioner can not properly compensate for belt stretch while the engine is running. Because of that the manual tensioner needs to be run much tighter than it should be at low stretch speeds. Later it provides insufficient tensioning at high stretch speeds.

A HD spring loaded tensioner like ThumpRRR will better tension the belt at all belt speeds. High tension at low speeds is bad on the blower snout and the crank snout. I know the idea of spending the monies on a new tensioner is not attractive. It might be the more prudent thing to do, however.


Ed
 
#6 ·
I don't have a good data point for you, Jeff.

If it were me, I would start tightening at about 20/25 ft/lbs and see if I had belt slip. If I did I might begin to look for a ThumpRRR tensioner. A manual tensioner can not properly compensate for belt stretch while the engine is running. Because of that the manual tensioner needs to be run much tighter than it should be at low stretch speeds. Later it provides insufficient tensioning at high stretch speeds.

A HD spring loaded tensioner like ThumpRRR will better tension the belt at all belt speeds. High tension at low speeds is bad on the blower snout and the crank snout. I know the idea of spending the monies on a new tensioner is not attractive. It might be the more prudent thing to do, however.
Reichard made 2 tensioners...one was spring loaded, the other was not. But both were manually adjustable. I have the spring loaded unit. And yeah you can crank it down then watch it work under load while the engine is running. Blip the throttle and watch the spring react. Is it enough? No idea. But as speeddemon says below, he feels it is weak.

I got rid of mine. It was a work of art but I found that a notched stock tensioner provided max boost. When I went to 25lbs on my Whipple 3.4 belt slip became an issue. With the engine running you get alot of stretch out of the belt and you can tighten it down more. I had get it as tight as hell to keep the belt from slipping. I am estimating 50 to 75 ft lbs. I think it's a flawed design. The spring just doesn't do anything, it's not strong enough. The Thump racing tensioner is the way to go.
I have a new factory tensioner with a Metco brace that I can always throw on. When you say notch it though, what exactly do you mean?
 
#5 ·
I got rid of mine. It was a work of art but I found that a notched stock tensioner provided max boost. When I went to 25lbs on my Whipple 3.4 belt slip became an issue. With the engine running you get alot of stretch out of the belt and you can tighten it down more. I had get it as tight as hell to keep the belt from slipping. I am estimating 50 to 75 ft lbs. I think it's a flawed design. The spring just doesn't do anything, it's not strong enough. The Thump racing tensioner is the way to go.
 
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