the snap ring idea will be nice. the staking is a pain in the ass and adds time and irritation for the end user. big fan of the snap ring idea!
I was able to get by the shop this morning and speak to the guy designing the pulley. They had CAD drawings printed out for me so I could see what they were planning to build. It was a good thing we spoke before production as there was one possible issue that we think we have worked out.
MMT was going to extend the snout of the pulley about .125" to get more meat behind the snap ring. I think this has the possibility of hitting the drive mechanism and not allowing it to fully seat completely into the crank hub. MMT thought that the pulley wouldn't need a snap ring at all to hold the bearing if it was a press fit with locktite. We are keeping the snap ring but there won't be as much meat behind it as they were initially planning to have. They may extend the snout .03" to get more material behind the snap ring but nothing like they originally were planning.
I was also thrown a little bit of a curve ball when they said they designed it with out spokes like the original pulley had. The designer said I can add the spokes if you'd like but by making this aluminum pulley bigger and thicker than the original steel pulley the weight of the two pulleys is almost identical. I couldn't argue with replacing the pulley with one of the exact same weight so the pulley will be spokeless.
I left MMT with another spare disassembled stock lower and one completely assembled lower just to double check measurements against. I'm supposed to get a phone call once they've double checked everything and made the necessary changes.
After all this talk about the snap ring area the shop is supposed to get me a quote to make 5 pulleys. I'm leaning toward going this route and putting a small sample into production. If the pulleys perform the way they need to then I'll go back with a large order and put together some sort of group buy. Unfortunately this means if I go this route there will only be 3 pullies available to others and I'll probably have to sell them at a loss just to get them out there.
I hope that after some testing the pullies will show that they're worthy of being built in higher numbers.