I have an 06 tC manual trans with the TRD supercharger. I got the s/c installed at about 3000 miles. I burned premium fuel and changed my oil approx every 3000 miles. I used conventional Mobil 5W30 as my Toyota district service manager advised. On cold mornings, I would let it warm up for a little while before driving and would take it easy the first mile or so. I did everything I could to maintain the car and protect the engine.
That being said, I didn't spend $3000 on a supercharger to drive the car like a granny, so I do get on it sometimes.
At approx. 10k miles, when it was cold out in November, the supercharger started making a terrible squealing noise, and I got it replaced under warranty. About 4 months and a few thousand miles later, I had the same problem again and this time the check engine light was on. They diagnosed it as a convertor and that was replaced, too. Somewhere between the second and third supercharger, I noticed I was losing oil. The oil would turn BLACK about 300-500 miles after an oil change, and I would be a quart low every 500-1000 miles. They did a compression test, and everything looked good. I wasn't noticing any smoke at the time.
Supercharger #3 has been on since about 15-16k and it has been fine, but I was still having the oil consumption issue. A co-worker was behind my car one day and said it looked like smoke was coming from the tailpipe. A couple days later, it smoked enough that I could see it in the rear view mirror. The car was at around 26,000 miles. I had a check engine light again...another convertor, probably getting choked by all of the oil.
I brought it in and they tore it down. The cylinder walls had vertical scratches in them, some you could feel with your fingernail, and the nice cross hatch hone job was completely worn off.
They decided to put a new short block in (block, pistons, rings, crank, rods, etc) and they did a valve job.
The tech didn't find any foreign matter in the engine or broken pieces. It just looks like hundreds of thousands of miles of wear. His theories are I may have just gotten a bad engine to start with, and that I drive it too hard. I don't think that some full throttle acceleration sometimes is driving it too hard. I shift before the rev limiter, and only hit the limiter a few times when I was getting used to the car. I don't race it, and it's my daily driver.
It's running fine now, and this was all covered under warranty. Otherwise I would be
I'll keep you posted if anything else happens.

 

wow, thats some story.
Glad to hear it was all covered under the warranty.
Thats gotta be at least $10 - 15 k in parts and labor.

 

Dang, that sucks super bad! I hope all is well and you don't run into anymore problems...

 

damn that really sucks man but glad everythings fixed now. good thing you didnt mod anything in your engine or you would have dealt with this without warranty.

 

Thumb up for the supercharger.

The best best part of that story was when you said "Somewhere between the second and third supercharger". 2nd or 3rd supercharger? Now I know why they won't be making them anymore. Yet all the oil issues are the owner's fault from what a lot of the dealers say.

 

Yeah. I work at the dealer and it was somewhat difficult to get the second supercharger replaced. I sent them a video with sound and that sold them. (Click picture to see/hear video)

Whether I "abused" my car or not, the supercharger shouldn't sound like this EVER and I shouldn't have had these problems.
I saw the bill for the short block job and it was almost $6000. Two superchargers and a convertor previously...about $8000 I would guess with labor, so yeah about $14,000 in warranty work.

 

Wow some people have some junky luck with these blowers. I bought mine used and it has about 13k miles on it and I regularly bounce the redline. That stinks though man. Did you have a timer or anything on it?

 

That sounds horrible! Gah. Oh well. I think it's just bad luck, because as far as I know ... compared to the general population, the S/Cs don't seem to have too many problems.

 

ok that sounds identical to a freaking table saw lol. yeah it definitely isnt right.

 

No timer or emanage or any other mods. Stock pulley etc.
I just have the TRD axleback exhaust and TRD quickshifter for mods.

 

I forgot to mention in my original post that I thought the engine sounded different towards the end, like a slight knock.
The tech said he heard the knock, too.

 

That might be the worst/scariest sound ive ever heard coming from an engine. Thank god for the warranty.

 

ouch man i heard of stories of the trd supercharger killing the engine
but on the whole, not really

 

That is a god-awful sound, like a cat stuck in a meat grinder......

 

Yea that story is crazy. When it was working alright did you notice an odd sound coming from your engine bay when you redlined and shifted? Kinda like a metal rattling noise?

 

wow i turned my volume up to thinking it was going to be hard to hear

 

So are they not making the S/C anymore - or won't be making them soon? I've been back and forth on whether to get the S/C (which has no warranty issues) or turbos, and reliability is one of the reasons I've been leaning to the S/C...is that not really the case??

BTW tough video dude, that sound was awful

 

They're not making it for the '05-'06 anymore (TRDsparks has them for really cheap right now!). What ever is left is it. Not sure about '07 and '08. Warranty is good to have if they honor it. There has been a bunch of people that have had a hard time with some of the dealers honoring the warranty. Some say it just depends on the dealer you go to.