SC Snapped Pulley Screws
SC Snapped Pulley Screws
Just thought I'd post up on this side of the water what happened when my SC pulley screws snapped - how I got it fixed and what I would have done if i'd had all this info in the first place.
I noticed when I was at Japfest that one of the 3 screws around the front of my pulley had snapped but stupidly thought not much of it and kept driving around.
The next weekend I was driving back from work and suddenly when I floored it the supercharger stopped spinning with a bizarre noise but kicked back in at half throttle. At this point having read about the pulley screws snapping I kinda knew what I would see when I opened the bonnet:
and what it looked like underneath (note the 3 snapped screws in the pulley):
To explain: the supercharger is essentially a modified Eaton M62? supercharger out of a Mercedes Benz 230 Kompressor. Where the charger is modified is in the pulley area - where on a mercedes the pulley is connected to the front area with a clutch which is controlled by the engine management. As the IS200 has no capability for this the front plate is locked to the pulley with 3 screws (which I now know to be as good as a chocolate teapot!)
Here is a picture to show the way the pulley, clutch plate and front cover connect and a picture of the plate and front cover so you can see how it works:
So the next step was to repair the problem - which I assumed was going to just involve drilling out the screws. I first took it to my Dad and he laughed and said at the least we'd need a pillar drill and he wasn't really prepared to do it as if he screwed up i'd kill him. Next as I was gong to WIM anyway I got little Tony to have a look convinced he wouldn't bat an eyelid about taking a drill to them. But no - he said the screws were too small and said I needed an engineering company.
Fortunately I was chatting to Rolex about the airbox I had bought off him as I was having trouble fitting it and he said that if I drove up to see him he would get his brother to deal with my pulley along with getting the airbox fitted.
So up at Rolex's we got the pulley off - this involved shunting the supercharger backward as more clearance was needed to remove the pulley:
I was then driving past Bristol the friday after so popped into Rolex's again and got my new machined pulley put back on:
Hopefully you can see the new big high strength - non chocolate - M5 screws in the pulley
Now that i have the pulley repaired I can actually hear a difference in noise and this probably explains some things.
Firstly I believe that the pulley screws were loose when I fitted the kit on my car - now in hindsight I should have checked the tightness of the screws in the front and it may have saved me all of this headache - so my main advice would be to check the screws on the front of your charger are tight. A symptom of loose screws seem to be a grinding noise when lifting off at high revs which must be the pulley and clutch vibrating.
I also noticed that while the screw holes in the pulley are M4 the size of the holes in the front cover and clutch plate are actually M5 which must cause some kind of shearing force on the pulley screws.
Either way if this happens to you my advice would be to remove the charger belt and bypass cable and drive around N/A (the power delivery is a tad unpredictable with the clutch slipping in and out) and to find an engineer who will be able to sort this out for you. Just remember that the pulley will need to be balance at the end - as it spins up to 10k rpm and an imbalance will cause havoc - and it is best to retap the holes to M5 so as to have the same size hole all the way through.
Ed
Great write-up Ed, and great news that it's working better than ever now ! :biggrin:
Thanks guys - thought it would be good for people to have access to all this in the future. Hope my boss doesn't realise how little work I did this morning lol! Must say a huge thanks again to Rolex for sorting it all out - would probably still have the SC in pieces otherwise.
glad you sorted it mate,
honestly had no idea that anything would go wrong, but apologies for the hassle.
Stav