If I go at WOT, the car pulls as normal until I get to about 3# of boost. Then the boost goes away and if feels like my clutch is slipping because the rpms are still rising. But if my clutch was slipping, I would not lose boost right? Whats going on??

 

It sounds like your may be encountering blower belt slippage. Check your belt to make sure it is tight.

 

How do I adjust the tensioner? I had a buddy do the install, and he will not be available today to help me.

 

There is a nut (located on top of the blower bracket -threaded rod) and 2 bolts (one of the bolts is attached to the tensioner and the other bolt is attached at the bottom of the blower bracket-attached to threaded rod) you have to LOOSEN up on the blower bracket. Did you get a manual with your blower. Make sure when you tighten back the bolts you do it in the correct order.

 

I suppose if your clutch was slipping bad enough you could lose boost since boost is related to load and the load with a slipping clutch would be less. You may even be backing off the throttle when it starts to slip and dropping out of WOT operation. Just something to think about.

Later ... Larry S.

 

You are right about the clutch and load. But I stayed in it one good time to be sure and the car still pulled, but the boost dropped. I looked at the blower belt and the flat side is smooth and hard like glass. Definately the culprit. What caused this? It has not even been 2 months since the install.

 

Ok, update, I got a good look at the tensioner pulley when I removed the inlet pipe. There is a lot of black, hard plastic type material in one section of the pulley. Obviously from the belt. Looks like the tensioner pulley locked up or something. That was the high pitched squeel I heard yesterday. What is going on?

 

There are four basic reasons that account for major boost drops.

slipping belt
inlet restriction
bad blower
outlet restriction

As has been stated, if for some reason the motor is under very light load, you will not see much boost. However, this hould be pretty obvious. Most of the other causes will fit into one of the above groups. To troubleshoot, it would help if you would tell us if it ever had boost and has now gone away, or if it's a new install. If the former, what changes you made or how you were operating the vehciale immediately before the change would be very helpful information.

Rich Krause

 

i bought a bran new idler pulley from chevy. it went bad after 10 mins of idling.

 

Bearings in tensioner are shot. the pulley was not turning. i hope i can just replace the bearings

 

Just get the spring loaded one from SD concepts and be done with it.

 

Another vote for the spring loaded tensioner from SD concepts. It works great and helps prevent belt slippage. I made 14 psi with a 6-rib belt with the SD tensioner.

 

I would love to, but I don't have the money right now.
I went to Bearings inc. and bought new bearings and put them in. It is good as new now. I hope I don't have to do this for a while.