I have a hard time with the gear clearance theory as being the actual real failure. Well for one there is no way to adjust the mesh between the gears. That is preset by the machined housings. If that was the case then vortech would have a run of housings out of tolerance which anything is possible but.... With the lids off this baby they have all kinds of measurements writtin on parts which tells me they check the crap out of them before they let them leave. Now on the note of bearing failure... if a bearing starts to go, that would directly cause a gear clearance issue. All in all, this vortech unit looks to be one VERY well made item but as with any precision item, it has a tight tolerance.. fine line between working flawless and all nasty breaking loose.

 

wait half a milimeter?!?! or am i mis-reading that?

 

Next oil change try going to a 10w40 and see if the majority of the chatter goes away. If your area is very very cold right now then go to a 5w40 at least. Will definitly not hurt a thing.

 

It is VERY small... Not sure if I can get the camera to see it well and focus on it but I will try. I may remove it but I do not have any pin gauges here to find the actual size. May be able to measure useing the id part of the caliper... mabey.

 

Well I was close on one item and wrong on another *LOL* Well on a good note I shot down the theory of the nozzle clogging from a small item. The reason is she has a filter assembly built in! Now filters do clog... but I think we are safe for the most part. Cannot tell how fine the mesh is on the screen without cutting it apart so the before mentioned part about coked up oil causing a clog is very possible depending on the screen mesh.

The thing I was close on is the oil outlet is .65mm My eyes were only .15 off not bad haha.

One thing is for certain, ONLY USE HIGH QUALITY OIL PERIOD AND ONLY USE THE HIGHEST QUALITY OIL FILTERS. No fram crap or quaker state / penzoil crap or some no name junk at the local kmart.

For filters I would only reccomend and in no particular order...

Wix
Purolator pure 1
mobile 1
k&n

For oil, everyone has a million opinions and most are good. I personally only use castrol syntec for the zinc contect and have always had perfect luck and a clean non coked up engine. There are many other good choices as well but since talking about oil usually turns into a worse topic than a political debate I will leave you with what I use and let others in the know reccomend what they use..

 

Garage... Understanding the tolerances are very tight, then it would be reasonable to say that the install of the shaft and unit is the culprit of SC failure and not a smaller SC pulley?

I mean, intuitively, if the shaft is installed within spec, then rotation speed of the shaft should have little impact on these bearings other than a shortened life span of the bearings themselves. And by that I do not mean 7 months. I mean years.

Am I incorrect on this?

 

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I asked ripp mods about the gear chatter and they said not to worry about it. Ive gotten more and less depending on the day and how the wind is blowing - still no issues after 8k (becides the s/c mount breaking).

 

Agreed, the chatter is normal and should not be cause of concern, but can be cut down and almost eliminated by oil choice.

 

Nice pic. Hmmmmm. So would putting a higher viscosity oil in it might inhibit the velocity of the oil out of that nozzle. Maybe?

 

Well on the performance note. Anytime you increase rpm on anything mechanical you increase wear on moving parts. I personally run a custom pulley with no worries as I installed the unit myself and know I went by every spec in the book and I have no issues "knock on wood" I would have to say with as tight as I found the shaft to sc coupler fitting together then yes, if things are out of alignment by improper install, bearing wear at both ends is highly possible. And with bearing wear comes gear clearance issues possibly, and with shafts having play can come seal issues. Man it is a vicious circle that all comes down to having it installed right. And of course anything can fail for no reason but you have to eliminate the stupid and pray for the oddball not to happen.

 

Yes it is possible of course, but I would rather have a very small amount of flow loss compared to an oil that does not provide as much sheer / shock protection on moving parts. In my mind it comes down to keeping oil in and on parts lubricationg them rather than running watery oil all over the place.

Good item to bring up though. I always let my car warn up for a but before running her / cruise very slow until the oil should be up to temp. Once it is up to temp, I would not be worried about the flow difference from 5w30 to 10w40.

 

yeah i HAVE to let my car warm up in the morning. It rattles a ton when it's cold out b4 it warms up good.

 

How cold is it in your area..?

 

Thanks. I do not have a smaller pulley on mine, but I have wanted to get one. Maybe after the warranty is up.

Anyway, it is too early to tell, but all this really does is brings to mind is that these failures are more of a result of "install" issues rather than "product" issues. Which means that TRD has, in a way, been right all along... it has been bad installs.

Seems like Toyota should have had (more) training for their installers before letting them loose on these SC's.

 

from what I have been told, TRD gave no training. Techs got the same manual I received. And most techs are impact wrench happy. And yes, it definitly comes down to bad installs, I totally agree on that. However making a customer buy a NEW supercharger unit because of a seal is robbery. To trust a tech to put this system with just a manual but tell them they cannot replace a simple seal which is cake to do.. Man how do they sleep at night.

 

man a lot of good info on this tread i've had my s'c for about 3000 miles no problem yet (thank god) but i will follow ur advise of going 10w-30 on my next oil change i've been using 5w-30 but thats too thin for miami weather

 

I unfortunately just started having bearing issues. so by the sound of it at this point in time, finding the parts to repair a bearing are not good? horrible timing too cause I've been planing on getting a new A4 and trading the tc in... now the audi dealer wont even consider it. hate to spend 3k just to be able to sell it.

 

hey madigan how long have u had urs installed man all this problems with this unit are making me rethink about modding it

 

i've had the supercharger for over a year. i swapped the pulley and headers about a month after getting it. its been great up till about 3 weeks ago. I obviously regret modding it now, but I knew the risk when I did it. I also noticed a small amount of oil about a month ago on the main housing just below the shaft, but it only did it once. and when I say small, it was only a slight residue.

 

why do you think its bearing problems?