This is not the usual doom and gloom that "A LIGHT PULLEY WILL BLOW UP YOUR ENGINE!". And OBVIOUSLY most of us do not need ME to tell them to avoid a cheap crank pulley or cheap ricey parts in general. I was changing mine because half the junk in my engine bay is corroded beyond belief and I said F. it. Not because of TEH GAINZ.
At least on a boxer engine it will not damage anything to run without a "harmonic balancer". It may have some kind of effect but not that Ive seen. This is a story about the Godsnow/Rxmotor pulleys you see floating around on ebay and amazon for so cheap there HAS to be something wrong with them. Right? Well there is actually.
The water pump and alternator pulleys are fine. Even look nice and dont seem to cause any detriment. The issue is with the crank pulley.
Is it unbalanced? No. The issue is with the thickness of the pulley in the center where it engages the shaft of the keyway. Its not thick enough.
I have pictures of the stock crank pulley and how it fits. Of the Godsnow/Rxmotor pulley and another VERY cheap pulley the Circuit Werks pulley kit.
Edit: The circuit werks just to be clear fits perfectly. No issue with the circuit werks. Just pointing out that the rxmotor / Godsnow is the odd one out here.
http://imgur.com/a/I1xzz
If you install this crank pulley and dont understand how it should look you could easily make the mistake of tightening down the bolt and thinking its done. In fact the pulley will have play back and forth on the keyway. This is not good for a lot of reasons such as possibly throwing a belt or causing vibrations or other issues. Not good.
I informed the company and they insisted "We have sold a lot of these and nobody has mentioned this".... So in other words they dont care. Thats why Im posting this just in case someone ever comes across them or does a google search to see if they are legit. They arent.