Customize Your Pulley: How to use Multiple Bore Options

Many of our customers are building custom jobs in their workshop or fixing their busted equipment. Electric motors fan systems, compressors, Phil’s new robot designed to take my job, old lawnmowers, or innovations in perpetual motion? Sometimes a standard pulley is just not going to work. Phoenix is your one-stop for idlers and drives, sure, but we also don’t want inventory rows that go on and on forever.

This brings us to the happy solution: Multiple Bore Options.

What does it mean for you? How does it work? Why do we have so many options? Let’s bore deep into this topic!

Most of our idler pulleys (77%) and some of our cast iron drive pulleys (25%) have "Multiple Bore Options" listed under INSIDE DIAMETER [1]section when you’re searching for pulleys.

For cast iron drives, like 3" Cast Iron V-Groove Drive Pulley, this means that the pulley has no finished bore, and you will need to select the bushing you want from a drop-down menu.

What's the purpose of a split taper bushing? A spit taper bushing is screwed into a cast iron pulley and provides a bore diameter of your choice, rather than having a hub permanently attached to the pulley. We offer 23 pulleys, and ten split taper bushings. For us, that means 33 different part numbers. For you? That means each pulley will work with shaft sizes from ½” to 1-3/4”. If you have an uncommon shaft on your small engine, say 1-3/8"? You can still choose cast iron pulleys between 3" and 19" diameters

The real crème de la crème, though, is our customizable idler pulleys. Because we know not all of our customers work in machine shops with presses designed specifically for the sole purpose of inserting and removing bore adapters and bushings, we proudly provide this service. Improperly installing a bore adapter can significantly reduce the life of your bearing, so we do strongly suggesting taking advantage of our offer. Plus, one time I tried to swap a bushing using my bare hands. Let me tell you, by the time I gave up, I was bushed.

While we do carry hundreds of pulley sizes and OEM replacements, sometimes you see the perfect base pulley, and it’s got the wrong bore adapter installed? Click on that item’s page, and we provide you the option to swap out the bore adapter that comes standard with the pulley. Just visit the page of the idler in question and select the bore adapter you want. We’ll do the rest. The drop-down menu will even show you an estimate of what the new stickout[2] will be, to take the guesswork out of the process.

The result is that, really, instead of “only” carrying 389 idler pulleys, we’ve actually got over 1500 options. PLUS, 10% off your next order with code BORE!

Is that enough? Can there ever be enough pulleys? I don’t think so. But if by some horrifying turn of events, you can’t find what you’re looking for? Call us at 800-776-9315, and dial 0. Monday through Friday 8-4:30 Eastern Standard time, you can expect a real non-robot pulley expert to answer your call.