Anyone changed from one type to the other on the same car?

I recently discovered that our AZQ engined 1.2/12-valve Fabia is supposed to have a freewheeling alt pulley. (According to partslink24, when VIN filtering results).

 

When we acquired it at approx 100k miles it didn't have such a thing. 

Wondering if I/we will notice any difference if/when I fit one? Got a Valeo branded one for not too much from ebay. Not seen it yet.

 

 Not really sure there's much point, but the experiment seemed interesting. 🤔 

 

 

 

I think you are actually the person to answer your own question, one that I have often asked myself.

 

When the one way clutch on a freewheeling pulley fails the belt jerks a little and the bearing makes a chirping noise, I had suspected that fitting a solid pulley would not create the noise and you seem to bear this out.

 

Drive belts always jerked with the acceleration/decellerations of the crankshaft before the freewheeling pulleys were brought in, unless they caused the alternator pulley or its mountings to come loose (like on my all steel X/flow engines) I cant see the need for you to change yours after all this time, it would be a solution looking for a problem and introduce a potential unreliable component.

 

If you can see considerable flapping of the auxiliary drivebelt and it looks like it could cause problems then fitting a freewheeling pulley would eliminate it.

Realistically, it's likely to outlive our ownership of the car, so not worried about reliability;  and I can always pop the fixed pulley back on.

 

I'll have to see if I can detect anything different in driving feel. 

 

Anyone got same engine with a freewheel pulley on it now? Can't recall much if any discussion of them except on the diesels.

These pulleys are fitted to engines with a lumpy tickover to reduce the pulsing and slapping of the belt and smooth the alternator output at idle.

6 hours ago, Breezy_Pete said:

I'll have to see if I can detect anything different in driving feel. 

 

That will be interesting to learn.

 

The changes of crankshaft angular velocity at low revs I think will be far more on a diesel engine than a petrol although maybe with the larger flywheel and harmonic bi-mass front pulley that is not the case.