So there were a number of things I wanted to check about the new pulley. The main thing I wanted to check is if the missing tooth on the sensor gear was in the proper position. As the crank turns, the absence of this one tooth causes no current to flow through the position sensor- and thus your ECU knows where the crank position is radially. If you haven't seen your crank pulley before, I am talking about the position of the missing tooth as seen on the stock pulley in this pic (note that the pulley is upside down in this pic):
So the first thing that I checked was to make sure that the position gear was within a reasonable distance from the crank position sensor. In this photo, you can see that it is pretty close- but not touching. This is good...
The next thing I wanted to check was that the missing tooth on the sensor gear is in the proper position relative to the keyway on the pulley itself. As you can see in this pic, when the keyway is straight up, the missing gear is at about 260 degrees:
When I look at the stock pulley in the same position, you can see the missing tooth is also at about 260 degrees, so this is good:
The next thing I wanted to check was that the sensor gear is of the proper diameter, and that the teeth are at the proper spacing. To accomplish this, I simply held the stock pulley up to the aftermarket one and noticed that two teeth were the same size. As such, I can already know that the number of teeth on both pulleys are the same, and because of that- I can know that they are also the same diameter. So this is also good...
The last thing that I wanted to check is if the sensor gear is intersecting with the sensor across the same geometric plane as the stock pulley. What I mean by this is imagine if you put three washers between the engine and the pulley when you put the pulley on the engine. Obviously, the pulley would be sitting further up on the crank, and the sensor pulley wouldn't be crossing the same geometric plane as if the washers weren't there. If the washers weren't there, the pulley would be in a plane closer to the engine. So that was what I was checking for. This isn't so easy, because the stock pulley isn't on the car. So to determine this, I looked at the stock pulley to see where the wear line was where the crank shaft stopped inside the pulley. See this pic:
Notice in the above pic, you can see a wear/grease line where the crank shaft stopped inside the pulley. You can see that it is about 3/32" shy of the surface of the pulley. Comparing that to the aftermarket one on the car shows that it is sitting in pretty much the same location. Not as accurate as my other tests, but I think it is probably good enough. So this is also good... Here's a pic of the shaft in the aftermarket pulley on the car:
So with all of that said- I don't see any problem at all with the new pulley. I've quadruple checked to make sure I plugged back in all of the wiring harnesses that I may have unplugged. I really can't find any fault anywhere. So my next plan of attack is as such:
- Reset the ECU and watch for the flashing CEL to come back
- If the CEL comes back, I will replace the Crank Position Sensor
Other than that, I am out of ideas... (dunno) Thoughts, anyone?
