Lot's of good questions, I'm glad I put this up.
As far as the 8 rib goes, we don't offer a 8 rib. This makes a HP 6 rib system work. I think it'll be possible to keep the price down to below the 8 rib, or at least close. The 8 rib takes more HP to run, and letting the extra 2 ribs hang over the balancer has never seemed to ideal to me anyway.
As far as robbing HP, I have no idea. I think it would be minimal though. The big plus is that I won't be losing HP because the belts not slipping.
The belt is at the same tension as it was before the install. I went with an inch longer belt. The reason it grips better is simply more area on the pulley making contact with the belt now. I have both the idler and tensioner 3.5" pullies on there, and just couldn't grab enough of the pulley with them.
Making it adjustible was originally what I wanted to do, but decided to go with the KISS principle instead. It will help keep costs down, and the tensioner is already there ; so why bother? The way it's set-up now, I doubt it could be used with pulley sizes larger than 3", but that's the point when you really start having issues anyway.
I know how to make a production piece, but there is one problem. I need to triangulate the thing to keep it stiff enough. If we were to do this I need to balance the stress between the mounts I used, and that means it can only be used with certain heights of the SC, meaning for cars with IC's only. In my mind, that's OK. Since ZZP's is 2.25 tall, and ours and Intenses are 1.91" tall 1 piece can be made to fit. I don't think you can do it this way with a non-ic car, but that's rare enough that it shouldn't matter. The only other thing is a gen V retrofit. I need to see one, because I believe tha case bolts are different.
Anyway, this is a true bolt on. 3 bolts, that's it. Installs in 5 minutes or less. I'm using a factory pulley on it too, and plan on making the final bracket for it look factory too.
