Has anyone ever actually measured this?

Last week, my aircon belt disintigrated, and unless i was imagining things, or just happy that the sheared off pulley wheel hadn't done any major damage, i'm convinced the car felt faster. Possibly the pulley had been out of alignment for some time and was draining power more and more as it got worse.

Is there any measurable power drain from turning the aircon belt, does anybody know?

Can you get "balanced" pulley wheels?!

 

jeez, if thats the case i'm binning my air con. Never use the dam thing. Ide rather put the window down and listen to that lovely flat four sound

 

If i remember rite, the air con saps about 8bhp if it is turned on though, your mpg will also be less. Try switching on the air con with your engine on tick over, you may notice that the engine will slow slightly for a second ish until the e.c.u tells it to suply more fuel to compensate and bring tickover back to where it should be. The same thing as having all the electrics in the car switched on, making the alternator harder to turn, the air con pump does the same thing.

 

the air con shuts off when u boot the loud pedal anyways to give u back sum of the power drain

 

Agree with sparkster.

Mickey: pulley's still turning though...

 

true
never thought of that

 

Thanks for replies guys. I'm aware that the engine drops power with aircon on if you don't floor it, and that the aircon is de-activated if you do floor it. But i was referring to just the motion of the pulley, without going anywhere near the AC "on" switch.

Just the action of turning the AC pulley and belt must take some power, though i suspect it's only a tiny amount - unless anyone knows otherwise...??