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Whipple belt chirp

Roh92cp

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Hello Guys I just got my car back from a Whipple Install and after driving around I get a very loud chirp or squeal when I let off the Throttle at high rpm in the lower gears ... Also the Supercharger seems to make rattling sound when idleing that sounds like little pebbles going around , Whipple requested a video but says it's normal and so does my mechanic!! Any help or feedback please ? Thanks
Likely you tensioner lost its ability to control the belt on decel. The belt and tensioner go through a very dramatic swing when under full song and shift or decel. When you accelerate hard a long pulls the belt stretches and the tensioner continues to go down taking up that slack, when you let off it swings back up to again take up slack since the belt now isn't under load. At the same time the tensioner is trying to take up that slack the Superchargers inertia is still spinning faster than the belt system that has slowed down so you end up with a chirp or squeal if the tensioner is not controlling the belt. The tensioner should be adjusted to its arm is near horizontal with the ground.

As far as the noise goes, all Whipple's make a little gear chatter when idling, and that's likely what your hearing now.
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SAL08HO

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Just find out if you have the current version tensioner and pulley bracket stands and if not the upgraded ones will take care of the chirp. The other sound is normal.
How do I find out ? I would hope I do since it's a new kit ... maybe 3-4 months old but new in the box... squeal is really loud when coming off the trottle at high rpm !
 

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First look at the tensioner and see it it's black billet aluminum with a white Whipple logo on it and if so it's the new one. If it's unpainted cast aluminum it's the old one. If you have the old one you probably have the old bracket stands as well.
 

sigintel

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Post pics please. First, find the sight glass on the passenger side towards rear of the SC. It is round glass window. Make sure it shows half full w clear oil.
Who did install?
Pics from under hood w flash or use bright flashlight so we can see the tensioner.
 

SAL08HO

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Likely you tensioner lost its ability to control the belt on decel. The belt and tensioner go through a very dramatic swing when under full song and shift or decel. When you accelerate hard a long pulls the belt stretches and the tensioner continues to go down taking up that slack, when you let off it swings back up to again take up slack since the belt now isn't under load. At the same time the tensioner is trying to take up that slack the Superchargers inertia is still spinning faster than the belt system that has slowed down so you end up with a chirp or squeal if the tensioner is not controlling the belt. The tensioner should be adjusted to its arm is near horizontal with the ground.

As far as the noise goes, all Whipple's make a little gear chatter when idling, and that's likely what your hearing now.
.

So most likely a tensioner adjustment will cure the problem? Thanks
 

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SAL08HO

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First look at the tensioner and see it it's black billet aluminum with a white Whipple logo on it and if so it's the new one. If it's unpainted cast aluminum it's the old one. If you have the old one you probably have the old bracket stands as well.
I will look into it but I'm pretty sure it's the latest version !
 

SAL08HO

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Post pics please. First, find the sight glass on the passenger side towards rear of the SC. It is round glass window. Make sure it shows half full w clear oil.
Who did install?
Pics from under hood w flash or use bright flashlight so we can see the tensioner.
Yes it does show half fuel and the shop installed over 100 Whipple kits so I know it's not an install error ... I was just concerned but if Whipple also replied normal than it's normal lol
 

Meat coyote racing

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This is my Whipple gen 2.5. The blower is used but everything else came from a brand new parts kit I put on the car at the beginning of October.

I have belt chirp about 90 seconds then it's gone.

In previous posts, it seems the new tensioner (which I have) solved a lot of other user's chirp issues.

Does anyone think it could be chirping only because the belt is cold? Any help would be appreciated.

 
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Excel

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This is my Whipple gen 2.5. The blower is used but everything else came from a brand new parts kit I put on the car at the beginning of October.

I have belt chirp about 90 seconds then it's gone.

In previous posts, it seems the new tensioner (which I have) solved a lot of other user's chirp issues.

Does anyone think it could be chirping only because the belt is cold? Any help would be appreciated.

thats a pretty standard chip.....mine does that
Changing belts helps a little but it comes back
Whipple could have improved this by now,I would have liked to have seen
a Green Belt option and 8 ribs over 6. I do have the nicer tentioner but its not
much different ,
 

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My car stopped chirping after I received a new set of pulley plate standoffs. They were slightly different in height and fixed the alignment problem I was having with the belt riding on the edge of the pulleys on the plate
 

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Meat coyote racing

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Options:
1. Look for the belts with the textured back side, maybe motorcraft? Might need to search forum for part nums.

2. Get new plate standoffs from Whipple.

3. Switch belt routing.
What I don't understand is why it stops chirping after 90 seconds or so. If it was something that required stand off or a new belt, why wouldn't it continue to chip???
 

sigintel

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What I don't understand is why it stops chirping after 90 seconds or so. If it was something that required stand off or a new belt, why wouldn't it continue to chip???
The chirp is the belt shifting against the metal pulley to relieve stresses caused by misalignment.
The belt is designed to absorb some misalignment over longer distance of contact.
As you shorten the distance of contact in half, you cut the allowable misalignment in half.
Imagine a 4mm lateral and 5 degrees of misalignment handled over a 10 foot span of belt (lol really long belt and two comically far apart pulleys).
If the contact to contact span is cut down to say, 3 inches, the belt would have to be insanely soft to accommodate that same misalignment.

So why is the chirp consistently cyclical?
Ever had a tire that exhibits 'cold spotting'? More common in Nylon containing tires under inflated or shallow tread near EOL and as weather is cooling.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nylon+tire+cold+spotting
The belts are similar and lose flexibility over time. Thus they lose the ability to accommodate misalignment.
Further, if you run your car long enough to get the under hood temps and thus the belt warm, then shut the car down: the warm belt stops moving and cools with the loads imparted on it by the belt routing - including any existing misalignment.
yup, you cool the belt with a slight 'cold spot' or tweak in the belt. This 'spot' consists of the deflection both positive and negative.
And since you have short belt runs with misalignment, this spot has a high stress and strain per distance.
When you restart the car cold, this 'cold spot' is simply too stiff in the aspect needed to accommodate the misalignment. As the cold spot passes thru the short misalignment, the forces cause the belt to very quickly slip against the metal pulley resulting in the metallic chirp.

Bullshit... prove it..

Rag on car till CHT 245. Park car for the night. In the morning, take a paint pen and number the pulleys with dots (1 dot, 2, 3,etc) and the SIDE of belt with dots centered on the contact patches against the pulleys. Remove belt and hang free in the air. Look at where the belt looks tweaked and note which pulleys.
You can add larger marks near the most tweaked parts of belt.
Reinstall belt exactly same orientation.
Start car.
Put camera phone in slowmotion mode and video pulleys where greatest tweaks were found. Does the chirp coincide with the tweaked section passing thru the most challenging aligned pulleys?

Test 2. Next day, when you park car for the night, set a timer for 30 minutes. Go back out and restart car and run for 2 minutes. Goal is to avoid hot forming a cold strain spot into belt.
Does it chirp next morning? ...

Your options are:
1. Get a belt that can slide sideways on the smooth faced pulleys and make less noise. This can be accomplished with a textured backside belt. possibly some motorcraft? that has been mentioned before on forum. If the 'anti chirp' texture wears off, replace belt or try different strategy. Get a more flexible (new) belt - keep changing everytime they start chirping again. @96gt4.6
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/th...-for-a-first-timer.114260/page-6#post-2588415
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/conversations/whipple-belt-routing.543877/#message-581971

2. Fix the misalignment, if you can. Loosen intake/Intercooler, loosen head unit, move them around until aligned(trial n error cause no easy tools to align). You can try changing standoffs. I tried 3 sets of standoffs and two idler plates with no luck. Also tried original stage 2 tensioner and billet tensioner.

3. Decrease the short runs. This worked for me permanently after doing 1 and 2 multiple times due to beating the crap out of belts on road course days. Short run routing below I ran for 6000 miles and 1 season road courses. This is also the fastest solution. If you have stock tensioner available and correct length belt, its about 15 minutes or two beers. I posted lengths I used somewhere. I will buy you a keg if this doesn't work for you. We tried loosening the head unit and max fucking alignments to cause problems with this plus used old squeaker belt and it just plain works.
Tested 4.0, 3.625, 3.5 pulleys:
91" belt w 4.0 pulley (road course)
90.5"-90.2" belt w 3.5 pulley (strip)
8X.X" for 3.0? (add offset idler hole for clearance if going crazy small E85)



img_2993-jpg.jpg
 
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Meat coyote racing

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The chirp is the belt shifting against the metal pulley to relieve stresses caused by misalignment.
The belt is designed to absorb some misalignment over longer distance of contact.
As you shorten the distance of contact in half, you cut the allowable misalignment in half.
Imagine a 4mm lateral and 5 degrees of misalignment handled over a 10 foot span of belt (lol really long belt and two comically far apart pulleys).
If the contact to contact span is cut down to say, 3 inches, the belt would have to be insanely soft to accommodate that same misalignment.

So why is the chirp consistently cyclical?
Ever had a tire that exhibits 'cold spotting'? More common in Nylon containing tires under inflated or shallow tread near EOL and as weather is cooling.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nylon+tire+cold+spotting
The belts are similar and lose flexibility over time. Thus they lose the ability to accommodate misalignment.
Further, if you run your car long enough to get the under hood temps and thus the belt warm, then shut the car down: the warm belt stops moving and cools with the loads imparted on it by the belt routing - including any existing misalignment.
yup, you cool the belt with a slight 'cold spot' or tweak in the belt. This 'spot' consists of the deflection both positive and negative.
And since you have short belt runs with misalignment, this spot has a high stress and strain per distance.
When you restart the car cold, this 'cold spot' is simply too stiff in the aspect needed to accommodate the misalignment. As the cold spot passes thru the short misalignment, the forces cause the belt to very quickly slip against the metal pulley resulting in the metallic chirp.

Bullshit... prove it..

Rag on car till CHT 245. Park car for the night. In the morning, take a paint pen and number the pulleys with dots (1 dot, 2, 3,etc) and the SIDE of belt with dots centered on the contact patches against the pulleys. Remove belt and hang free in the air. Look at where the belt looks tweaked and note which pulleys.
You can add larger marks near the most tweaked parts of belt.
Reinstall belt exactly same orientation.
Start car.
Put camera phone in slowmotion mode and video pulleys where greatest tweaks were found. Does the chirp coincide with the tweaked section passing thru the most challenging aligned pulleys?

Test 2. Next day, when you park car for the night, set a timer for 30 minutes. Go back out and restart car and run for 2 minutes. Goal is to avoid hot forming a cold strain spot into belt.
Does it chirp next morning? ...

Your options are:
1. Get a belt that can slide sideways on the smooth faced pulleys and make less noise. This can be accomplished with a textured backside belt. possibly some motorcraft? that has been mentioned before on forum. If the 'anti chirp' texture wears off, replace belt or try different strategy. Get a more flexible (new) belt - keep changing everytime they start chirping again. @96gt4.6
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/th...-for-a-first-timer.114260/page-6#post-2588415
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/conversations/whipple-belt-routing.543877/#message-581971

2. Fix the misalignment, if you can. You can try changing standoffs. I tried 3 sets of standoffs and two idler plates with no luck. Also tried original stage 2 tensioner and billet tensioner.

3. Decrease the short runs. This worked for me permanently after doing 1 and 2 multiple times due to beating the crap out of belts on road course days. Short run routing below I ran for 6000 miles and 1 season road courses. This is also the fastest solution. If you have stock tensioner available and correct length belt, its about 15 minutes or two beers. I posted lengths I used somewhere. I will buy you a keg if this doesn't work for you. We tried loosening the head unit and max fucking alignments to cause problems with this plus used old squeaker belt and it just plain works.
Tested 4.0, 3.625, 3.5 pulleys:
91" belt w 4.0 pulley (road course)
90.5"-90.2" belt w 3.5 pulley (strip)
8X.X" for 3.0? (add offset idler hole for clearance if going crazy small E85)



img_2993-jpg.jpg
I love this forum lol. Thanks for taking the time to explain it, in detail. This place is great for talking with people that have light years more experience and are willing to help. I'll give the short belt route a shot!
 

Excel

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nice post SINGINTEL,you micro managed what Whipple could not.
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