Thank to Tone and his attic full of parts, I'm back on the road again. I also have a new understanding of where my problems began.
The intial problem was that the shop that installed the SC crossthreaded the large EGR pipe when they threaded it into the EGR mounting block. I think that they did this because they attached the EGR block to the supercharger intake plenum before they installed the supercharger on the engine. It is certainly easier to do that, but then you end up with an EGR nut that is a bitch to access. So they probably mounted the EGR block to the supercharger, then threaded the EGR nut up into the EGR block crooked.
That caused several problems. First off it didn't seal very well (as was evident in the carbon on the EGR nut). This also contributed to the supercharger "noise" that I had assumed was from the nose of the supercharger. The second and more important problem was that because it was threaded in crooked there was tension put on the EGR block. This caused the 6mm bolts that hold the EGR block to supercharger intake tube to wobble and strip the threads out of both the supercharger and the EGR block. In all fairness, the shop may have stripped one or more of these holes during the initial install.
So I had to remove the supercharger. Dissassemble the intake plenum to have the back of it heli-coiled. FYI, the material back there is VERY thin. Do not torque down those bolts if you think you have a leak. Remove the little tube, seal it and reinstall using only minimal torque on them.
Last but not least, the shop didn't install the bracket that holds the EGR block to the intake manifold. This is probably because it didn't line up with the EGR block torqued the way it was. This aggrivated the issue of misalignment and allowed the EGR block to move which as noted above probably helped strip out the 6mm threaded holes.
So, when installing or working on your supercharger, if something won't thread in by hand, something is wrong. Either chase the threads with a tap to clean them our, or check the position of everything. The EGR nut should thread up into the EGR block with your fingers until it bottoms out. The 5 bolts that hold the tube between the EGR block and the intake should thread in by hand until they touch the tube. Last but not least, loosen the bracket that holds the supercharger nose up while you bolt that bracket to the lower bracked on the front of the engine. One of the holes there had to have it's threads chased as well.
The next bad thing for me is that while it was parked the right rear brake caliper froze. Once the supercharger was installed again, I drove 45 minutes home and found that wheel was quite hot. I replaced it last night, but I found that the inside of the ebrake drum was wet with gear lube. I'm hoping that the lube just leaked out when that end of the axle got hot, and that no damage has been done to the axle seal. Wish me luck as I watch for signs of moisture for the next week or two. That did give me the opportunity to install the Indy4x kevlar reinforced braided brake lines. They made as much of a difference on the VX as they did on the Trooper. "Wow" really describes the change.
-Tad
Reply With Quote
