[Build Thread] -- Journey to 700+ WHP [Supercharger]

[turtle64b]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

06/23/2018 Update -- **VERY SAD**

My supercharger is leaking oil.
Not sure where or why but it was leaking oil.

Checked the dipstick and there's almost no oil left in it.
Saw oil inside the hex bolt (not the oil dip stick side but the other side)
saw it right below the supercharger seal / shaft area, saw it sprayed onto my strut bar, right below the supercharger belt, and pretty much everywhere on the drivers' side of the engine bay. the passenger side of the engine bay is all dry.

i think i dont know what to do.

i'm extremely depressed for a few reasons:

(1) the guy who rebuilt my SC is not responding to my texts or calls; he shut off his phone after i tried calling him first and leaving a message, then now his phone is shut off so im sure he heard the message. he is a mobile mechanic, i didn't get a receipt which i should have, and so there's no proof that he did the work for me. i doubt he is going to fix it for me.

(2) i dont know what part of the blower the leak is coming from. i believe it is coming from the shaft / seal and it may be a loose seal or something. i dont know.

(3) I don't know of any reputable person or shop in the sacramento area that is capable of rebuilding or taking apart and looking at and fixing supercharger issues. that's why i turned to a mobile mechanic who did a good job for sure, it's just leaking somewhere but it was at least running fine.

I understand errors happen but like, this made me extremely depressed.

I almost just want to sell the car and go stock 4 door reliable nothing boosted nothing modded no nothing. -_-

idk if i'm overreacting or not, but i'm pretty down in the slumps atm.

Send it to the pros and move on. Sorry to hear about your misfortune .

If it is indeed his fault and he chooses to avoid you and not offer resolution, leave a bad review or put him on blast publicly. Bad business only leads to more unless someone says something. It may draw him out to come to some resolution too.

To be devil's advocate, he could be researching how to make it right. Give him some time but keep trying to reach him for explanation or a path forward.

[cupcakez]

Originally Posted by turtle64b

Send it to the pros and move on. Sorry to hear about your misfortune .

If it is indeed his fault and he chooses to avoid you and not offer resolution, leave a bad review or put him on blast publicly. Bad business only leads to more unless someone says something. It may draw him out to come to some resolution too.

To be devil's advocate, he could be researching how to make it right. Give him some time but keep trying to reach him for explanation or a path forward.

Thanks man. I appreciate the support.
I really need all I can get right now.
I called off work tonight for my grave shift cause I felt so internally sick. Physical sickness doesnt stop me but this is so bad that I had to call off work, and I been working 7 days a week 85 hour average per week for the past 4 months.

Thats how bad i felt.

I dont know his last name but I know his address and his first name...found him from CL
Very nice person, never seemed like he would do me wrong but I think he is avoiding me now that I told him about this issue.

I did a bit of digging and research, and talking to a couple people.
Some things I could think of / suggested to me:

(1) Plugs on the V3 SCi is in the wrong spots and need to be swapped. But does it really matter if they are pretty much symmetrical of each other? I know some SC blowers do matter but for the V3 SCi i dont think it matters.

(2) Too much pressure build up from new engine swap and 928 full upgrade of internals causing a spout of oul to be sprayed out the vent plug? A solution to that from what I hear is that some Mustang guys purchase a closed plug and just close both sides...

(3) I doubt it is leaking from the seals because how the heck does oil spray from there and travel UPWARD and BACKWARD , landing straight dead center into the oil vented plug and not the drain plug? Also there was spray everywhere on the drivers engine bay side while the passenger side was dry.

(4) It could be leaking from both top vent plug AND bad seal fitment? That is the worst case but I doubt it is this option.

(5) Its all fine and im overreacting. The dipstick even though it remains dry, and oil sprayed everywhere, it is possible that it was spraying due to too much pressure with the A2A kit and full 928 upgrades, and oil just sprsyed because of it. And may continue to spray a bit more til its leveled? Idk. If so, I would need to confirm it by draining the rest of the oil and seeing how much of it is left in the blower, putting that oil back in and adding a little more depending on how much is needed. Then cleaning the outside of blower completely and revving the engine with hood open to see where exactly the spray is coming from.

Any other thoughts, ideas, plausible solutions are welcome please </3

[turtle64b]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

Thanks man. I appreciate the support.
I really need all I can get right now.
I called off work tonight for my grave shift cause I felt so internally sick. Physical sickness doesnt stop me but this is so bad that I had to call off work, and I been working 7 days a week 85 hour average per week for the past 4 months.

Thats how bad i felt.

I dont know his last name but I know his address and his first name...found him from CL
Very nice person, never seemed like he would do me wrong but I think he is avoiding me now that I told him about this issue.

I did a bit of digging and research, and talking to a couple people.
Some things I could think of / suggested to me:

(1) Plugs on the V3 SCi is in the wrong spots and need to be swapped. But does it really matter if they are pretty much symmetrical of each other? I know some SC blowers do matter but for the V3 SCi i dont think it matters.

(2) Too much pressure build up from new engine swap and 928 full upgrade of internals causing a spout of oul to be sprayed out the vent plug? A solution to that from what I hear is that some Mustang guys purchase a closed plug and just close both sides...

(3) I doubt it is leaking from the seals because how the heck does oil spray from there and travel UPWARD and BACKWARD , landing straight dead center into the oil vented plug and not the drain plug? Also there was spray everywhere on the drivers engine bay side while the passenger side was dry.

(4) It could be leaking from both top vent plug AND bad seal fitment? That is the worst case but I doubt it is this option.

(5) Its all fine and im overreacting. The dipstick even though it remains dry, and oil sprayed everywhere, it is possible that it was spraying due to too much pressure with the A2A kit and full 928 upgrades, and oil just sprsyed because of it. And may continue to spray a bit more til its leveled? Idk. If so, I would need to confirm it by draining the rest of the oil and seeing how much of it is left in the blower, putting that oil back in and adding a little more depending on how much is needed. Then cleaning the outside of blower completely and revving the engine with hood open to see where exactly the spray is coming from.

Any other thoughts, ideas, plausible solutions are welcome please </3

1) When looking at the car from the front, the dipstick should be on the right and the vent plug on the left.

2) I don't think that sealing the unit is a good idea.

3-5) I would do a complete oil change on the blower (drain completely and refill with one 4oz bottle). Consider taking it off for a thorough inspection of where the oil is coming from. Also look at the air side. My seals were bad and I had leakage into to air side of the unit...

If you get the same result or you find where the leak is coming from and its not something trivial, send it to the experts. I thought about rebuilding mine myself, but I felt that the peace of mind gained from sending it to Vortech was worth it. They're also a bunch of good guys who next-day-aired my SC back to them for inspection and back to me when I thought something went wrong with their rebuild and they had a question about it too.

[Spooler]

My suggestion to you would be to pull the supercharger back off and send it to a quality repair shop. I am sure folks on here can help guide you in the right direction.

[TopgunZ]

Things like this happen in the boosted world all the time. Dont let it defeat you, just mark it up as lesson learned. Its simple, take the SC off (30 minutes) and send it to a certified Vortech shop or 928 motorsports. You have way too much invested in this build to admit defeat and scrap the car over something so minor. There are guys that throw rods on the dyno which is 100 times more of a headache than having a supercharger spit oil.

[cupcakez]

Hey guys!
Thank you for all of your support, it helps so much!

So the issue with the supercharger v3 SCi, 928 fully upgraded internals blower head unit was that it was spouting oil from just the vent plug and the vent plug only.

We took the following steps to diagnose this issue:
(1) Swap brass plugs to see if it spouts from the right side as it did from the left side -- Check. The vent plug indeed spouted oil no matter which side it was on.

(2) Drained the entire supercharger oil volume from the blower (Thankfully did not even have to lift the car up at all -- just turn the wheel to the left all the way to access the drain plug below lol. The purpose of this was to find out how much oil was left (to see how much was sprayed out over time). We got about 1 oz or 1.5 oz at max.

(3) Before filling up the supercharger with a full bottle of oil again as we thought the case was an overfill which is common as to why supercharger blower head units will spout oil --> We decided to take into the account the total volume of internal pieces in the blower from the 928 upgrade took up [vs] the total volume of the internal pieces the stock pieces took up before the 928 upgrade on the V3 SCi blower.
We came to conclusion that because the 928 impeller was slightly taking up more volume than the original impeller, the blower would naturally need less oil for it to run properly without spouting oil.

(4) To test (3), we poured in about 3oz - 3.5 oz. max of supercharger oil into the blower, then closed it up, started the engine in static placement, revved it to 3 RPMs and held it there for about 10 seconds, while my buddy looked at the engine bay specifically the supercharger and the vent plug / seals area watching for any oil to spill, leak, spout, spray out.

(5) Test Results: None. No oil came out whatsoever. We checked the dipstick and it was odd because we would take it out, clean it, put it in, and it would read some oil to the top of the diamond pattern. Wipe it, put it in, take it out, and it's completely dry. Wipe the dry one, put it in, take it out and oil would appear, lol so weird and this was all while the car was completely off!

(6) We decided to take it for a test drive around town and when we parked after about 7 min of driving, we found no oil to be spouted out or leaked out from the blower. We checked below and still dry, no leaks below either! (Mind you the undercover of my car is remaining off for some days to detect any immediate leaks of any kind).

(7) We drove the car again around town back to the shop and found no leaks again, no bottom leaks, nothing -- still the engine bay was dry! Yay!

(8) I decided it was safe for me to now drive it back home and to work as a real time testing to see how it goes.

(9) I drive it home, then to work which is 1800 feet up in the mountains so there are some crazy slopes going up and down -- and check the engine bay and see no oil spill, spout, or anything of the sort. Great!

=======================================

TLDR; We fixed the SC oil leak problem

[JARblue]

Sounds like it was a best case scenario

[Optimiser]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

06/23/2018 Update -- **VERY SAD**

My supercharger is leaking oil.
Not sure where or why but it was leaking oil.

Checked the dipstick and there's almost no oil left in it.
Saw oil inside the hex bolt (not the oil dip stick side but the other side)
saw it right below the supercharger seal / shaft area, saw it sprayed onto my strut bar, right below the supercharger belt, and pretty much everywhere on the drivers' side of the engine bay. the passenger side of the engine bay is all dry.

i think i dont know what to do.

i'm extremely depressed for a few reasons:

(1) the guy who rebuilt my SC is not responding to my texts or calls; he shut off his phone after i tried calling him first and leaving a message, then now his phone is shut off so im sure he heard the message. he is a mobile mechanic, i didn't get a receipt which i should have, and so there's no proof that he did the work for me. i doubt he is going to fix it for me.

(2) i dont know what part of the blower the leak is coming from. i believe it is coming from the shaft / seal and it may be a loose seal or something. i dont know.

(3) I don't know of any reputable person or shop in the sacramento area that is capable of rebuilding or taking apart and looking at and fixing supercharger issues. that's why i turned to a mobile mechanic who did a good job for sure, it's just leaking somewhere but it was at least running fine.

I understand errors happen but like, this made me extremely depressed.

I almost just want to sell the car and go stock 4 door reliable nothing boosted nothing modded no nothing. -_-

idk if i'm overreacting or not, but i'm pretty down in the slumps atm.

This is a previous post I made regarding my experience with this issue:

During my first session at a recent track day I was getting oil leaking out of the breather valve on my Vortech supercharger. I'm thinking it's because I'm over spinning with pulley upgrades as it didn't leak at a previous track day when the pulleys were stock. It doesn't leak at all driving on the road. It's just leaks at constant high RPM.
Is there any fix for this other than "downgrading" the pulleys which I don't want to do. Would getting a "Trim" upgrade with the high speed bearings and impeller fix this?
Has anyone else experienced this at the track with an "over spinning" Rotrex supercharger?
The only possible solution I could find on the net was to reduce the oil level in the supercharger by 1/4 to 1/2 oz out of it's normal 4 oz max fill, but I've not tried that yet.

I see you have a "workaround" for you issue but be warned of constant high RPM like a track day.
I'm still to see if reducing the oil level reduction will work for me next track day.

[cupcakez]

Originally Posted by Optimiser

This is a previous post I made regarding my experience with this issue:

During my first session at a recent track day I was getting oil leaking out of the breather valve on my Vortech supercharger. I'm thinking it's because I'm over spinning with pulley upgrades as it didn't leak at a previous track day when the pulleys were stock. It doesn't leak at all driving on the road. It's just leaks at constant high RPM.
Is there any fix for this other than "downgrading" the pulleys which I don't want to do. Would getting a "Trim" upgrade with the high speed bearings and impeller fix this?
Has anyone else experienced this at the track with an "over spinning" Rotrex supercharger?
The only possible solution I could find on the net was to reduce the oil level in the supercharger by 1/4 to 1/2 oz out of it's normal 4 oz max fill, but I've not tried that yet.

What some of the mustang guys with SCs do is replace the vented plug with the shipping plug for the SC that way there is no way for oil to escape.
Downside is you risk too much pressure buildup and nay or may not break your current seals.

I would only use that solution as a last resort.

If your blower is stock internals and still requires 4oz of oil, I would stay with the 4 oz.
But if its still leaking, I would try a tiny less and see how that works.

I only confidently put less oil because the impeller volume size is a bit bigger than stock v3 sci impeller.

Now what I will say is I have only revved it to maybe 4 or 5rpms at max I think 6rpm by accident in low gears.

From that I still have yet to see any oil leaks but I hope I dont see any oil leaks in the high RPM range!!!

[Optimiser]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

What some of the mustang guys with SCs do is replace the vented plug with the shipping plug for the SC that way there is no way for oil to escape.
Downside is you risk too much pressure buildup and nay or may not break your current seals.

I would only use that solution as a last resort.

If your blower is stock internals and still requires 4oz of oil, I would stay with the 4 oz.
But if its still leaking, I would try a tiny less and see how that works.

I only confidently put less oil because the impeller volume size is a bit bigger than stock v3 sci impeller.

Now what I will say is I have only revved it to maybe 4 or 5rpms at max I think 6rpm by accident in low gears.

From that I still have yet to see any oil leaks but I hope I dont see any oil leaks in the high RPM range!!!

I am just now getting the 928 Motorsports impeller and bearings/seal upgrade/replacement and I'm not clear on how that changes the volume of oil required in the supercharger as you mention.

[cupcakez]

Originally Posted by Optimiser

I am just now getting the 928 Motorsports impeller and bearings/seal upgrade/replacement and I'm not clear on how that changes the volume of oil required in the supercharger as you mention.

Look closely at the impellers.
One has more vanes than the other = More volume of space used up in the blower.

Unless I'm mistaken and that they are still taking up the exact amount of space just one has smaller but more multiple vanes than the other one which has less vanes but bigger?

Not sure. lol.
I'm still in the testing phase too :P

[Chuck33079]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

Look closely at the impellers.
One has more vanes than the other = More volume of space used up in the blower.

Unless I'm mistaken and that they are still taking up the exact amount of space just one has smaller but more multiple vanes than the other one which has less vanes but bigger?

Not sure. lol.
I'm still in the testing phase too :P

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the vanes are in the air stream, and have no bearing on anything relating to oil volume?

[cupcakez]

Originally Posted by Chuck33079

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the vanes are in the air stream, and have no bearing on anything relating to oil volume?

Oh right lol I think thats correct. I had a feeling I was wrong somewhere but couldnt quite put my finger on it.
I guess I may have the same issue then, at higher rpms for possibly even long periods of time, oil may shoot out haha.

Makes sense though cause otherwise oil would shoot out everywhere lmao

Edit:
I take that back.

I am looking closer at it now.
The vanes that are part of the airflow sure dont touch oil but I would assume maybe the extra metal leading UP to that vane (if that makes any sense) = tiny bit more space used up?

I mean they both have 16 lines or whatever you want to call it. But both do not have 16 vanes sticking out for air.

I dont even know if that entire blades side touches oil or not. I would now assume it doesnt otherwise it would spill from the front into the filter right?

Kay Im out of ideas. lol

[Optimiser]

Originally Posted by Chuck33079

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the vanes are in the air stream, and have no bearing on anything relating to oil volume?

That was exactly my point.

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by cupcakez

Oh right lol I think thats correct. I had a feeling I was wrong somewhere but couldnt quite put my finger on it.
I guess I may have the same issue then, at higher rpms for possibly even long periods of time, oil may shoot out haha.

Makes sense though cause otherwise oil would shoot out everywhere lmao

Edit:
I take that back.

I am looking closer at it now.
The vanes that are part of the airflow sure dont touch oil but I would assume maybe the extra metal leading UP to that vane (if that makes any sense) = tiny bit more space used up?

I mean they both have 16 lines or whatever you want to call it. But both do not have 16 vanes sticking out for air.

I dont even know if that entire blades side touches oil or not. I would now assume it doesnt otherwise it would spill from the front into the filter right?

Kay Im out of ideas. lol

All the vanes on the impeller are in the air flow. No part of the impeller touches oil. The oil is in the middle housing. Think what is happening is a combination of things. Oil level, high rpm, fluid expansion, poor venting. The oil capacity of the housing isn't that much. With high rpms, the oil gets splashed around a lot. Also with the high rpms, you heat which makes the oil expanses. And then you have a pipe plug with a simple hole drilled into it. One thing to do. You need to do is make a shield on the bottom of the vent plug to keep oil away from it. And put some type of breather on top of it. Also what you could do. Put a hose fitting where the vent plug goes. A length of hose. Then you need an orifice of some type in the hose. Then put the end of the hose into a catch can.

When I worked for ElliottTurboMachinery. I built and repair stuff like this.