Straightening dent in crank pulley

After looking at the belt on the car it looks like it can sit in the middle away from the flange. Would that cause any issue?

So, why exactly haven't you followed my advice and put that thing on a block of wood, put another block of wood on it and whacked it?

In reply to Dr. Hess:

Did that. It bent back abit, I got an idea and checked the pulley thats on the car. The dent is now much less of a dent. And I figured id ask before I keep whacking it.

Aluminum does go into a malleable state with heat, but it happens somewhere around 500°. Over 650°-ish (estimating) it will turn into cottage cheese when you try to work it. Much higher and you have a puddle.

There are aluminum "forges" for specialty applications that are basically meth-d up toaster ovens, so it doesn't take much. Even a basic propane torch will get 3/4" square up to forging temp.

All that said, I'd imagine your odds of ruining it is high if you heat it. ANY accidental mistrike or inadvertent pressure on the ribs will ruin them if they're at forging temp.

I can't see any visual signs of fatigue showing through the anodizing. (AL usually gets wrinkles on the surface before it pops. Once it has those wrinkles it's pretty much already broken.) I'd probably make a die to fit into an undamaged pulley groove with some angle iron or the like, put it in a vise and then line up the bend over my die and use a dead blow hammer on the inner edge of the pulley face to work it back out. You want any force on the grooved side to not come from direct hammer blows.

Go slowly and work incrementally alternating side to side and it will probably be fine.

Dr. Hess wrote: So, why exactly haven't you followed my advice and put that thing on a block of wood, put another block of wood on it and whacked it?

I'm afraid to ask how much of this homespun wisdom overlaps with your day job.

In reply to Crackers:

I got it straight enough I think itll work. The belt that goes there is narrower than the space given so it should clear.

ssswitch wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: So, why exactly haven't you followed my advice and put that thing on a block of wood, put another block of wood on it and whacked it?

I'm afraid to ask how much of this homespun wisdom overlaps with your day job.

Doctoring isn't all lasers and robots and precision. They use hammers and chisels too. Veterinarians can get down right barbaric.

I see no reason not to hit this pulley with something.

I was thinking about this thread the other day. Did you eventually get it straightened out enough to work by hitting things the medical-doctor way?

I have found that about half of wrenchin' (mechanical wrenchin', that is) is:

1. Knowing what to hit.
2. Knowing when to hit it.
3. Knowing how hard to hit it.

There's doctorin' hammering too, but most stuff is done with basically an air powered Dremmel like moto-tool.

collinskl1 wrote: This may very well be a dumb idea... What about just cutting the bent portion of the flange off?

This is what I would do. Either cut it off, or see if I could get in there with a reciprocating saw and use a fine tooth blade kind of like a narrow file and get rid of the metal that gets in the way of the belt. Doing that would also clean off a swath of anodizing on the opposite side (the backside of a blade cuts too!) so this won't be cosmetically pretty. But nothing really would be.

The belt is ribbed, and if the alignment of the pulley is good, the flange doesn't really do anything anyway. A small portion missing would have very little impact on the pulley's function. Balance could be an issue.

Balance won't be an issue, it's very low amount of weight close to the crank centerline. A larger issue would be the elimination of a harmonic damper if present.