I have been chasing a fine mist of 'oil' spraying onto the underside of my bonnet and around my turbo compressor for some time now. changing various pipes and gaskets to rule things out. Then I thought it was the front pulley oil seal but I am now pretty confident that is not the case. I was looking at the car last night with my dad and he asked what's that pulley do and was pointing the pineapple racing idler any had spotted the bearing look seal area looked wet. Sure enough I wiped around it and there has clearly been grease escaping from the seal. Whether this is definitely the culprit of my bonnet mist or not remains to be seen but it is in exact alignment with where the spray comes from. I did a quick search and found some older posts with people have leaking seals and failures. How worried should I be? The pulley has done only a few hundred miles and I don't think it has been over 6k rpm more than a couple of times when the car was previously dyno'd currently I have been running in at lower rpm and get this spray every time I go out. it is a tiny amount but none-the-less a spray which is very annoying and eventually it is likely the bearing will run dry and seize. Part of me hopes this is the answer as it has been driving me mad. But now I want to know if the pulley/bearing is destined to fail in which case I need to get on to Pineapple about getting a new pulley with a better bearing seal?

Thanks for any info.

 

I would start with Pineapple Racing, they are good folks and if the bearing is leaking I'm sure they would fix it for you. Quite possibly it's just a bad bearing they got.

I bought a pile of them for all the guys around here a few years back and they are going strong.

Dale

 

The bearing went out on my idler pulley recently pretty quickly due to me overtightening the belt. I contacted Rob at Pineapple racing and he gave me the part number for the bearing. I have it written down somewhere but ended up sending it in to them to replace it. It was lik $15 including shipping and he had it done and shipped back out to me within the day he received it. They are extremely good with customer service and I'm sure they'll take care of you. He sent me the tension instructions and I haven't had any issues since.

 

Thanks for info. I will drop them a mail and double check tension

 

Please post all that info for other members like my self that have the idler pulley. Just for future failure if any. Let us get that part number as week as the tensions instructions. Thanks

 

Doubt any bearing grease would "spray", there's just not that much of it. Probably something else that may have gotten on your idler. Could be coming from any post-turbo hose, where you have oil in your intake charge (either from the PCV system or your turbo(s)). One culprit is the stock (non 99 spec) Y-pipe hose. This is a known failure point

Doesn't mean you shouldn't keep an eye on that idler tho