Project Supracharger

any updates dave

At the crack of sparrow fart, I was up tinkering with the wiring and found that the two fused relays I bought at the same time for the HHO and water/meth, which were labelled identically, were actually pinned in a different configuration, yet I had mirrored the spades from one to the other, so I swapped the spades around to match the numbers correctly and the job was jobbed.

The charge-cooler pump now ran, but refused to pump, a hose-pipe was handy that conveniently happened to be the same bore, but lots of Anglian Water later, an air-lock was still winning.

It's as tight as something in a Nunnery in there, so my next bright idea was a pit-stop bumper removal to see what was what, the plumbing was found to be sound as a pound and the problem turned out to be the vertical pump-mounting, so I turned it onto it's side and jury rigged it with a couple of cable ties and Bob's your dad.

Then Dan's right-hand man turned up with a cup of coffee and a mobile bacon sarni lady turned up, jackpot.

Now the job I came for can commence.

After some head scratching, the wires in the foot-well were allocated the jobs they were put there for, then onto pre dyno calibration of the AEM to communicate with it's new friends.

All was going sweetly until, CLUNKITY-CLUNKITY, turn it off toute sweet.

After inspecting the belt and pulleys, I Insisted to inspect the supercharger, and not a pretty sight was found.

In a nutshell, the brand spanker supercharger is a right-off, the rotors and body are ripped to ribbons and the shaft is bent too.

why? yet nothing untoward could be seen?

However, a prog-le around inside the charge-cooler with my magnet on a bendy stick retrieved this shrapnel?

Further inspection revealed that the ICV had decided to die and allowed it's component sticky outy bits to be drawn into the charger.

Now a little wiser and a lot poorer, I have too late, now spoken by telephone to a 'few in the know' and have learned that it's becoming apparent that these old ICV's are beginiing to die and to kill the engine it was serving.

The trip home was an expensive tow of shame.

I regard myself 'lucky', as the charge-cooler prevented the shrapnel from killing the almost worthless N/A lump.

At the weekend I will return the Supra to jury rigged N/A status to get me mobile again and have already began the hunt for another M112, but will definitely be using a brand spanker of an ICV next time, even though I could buy a Ford Fiesta with a full ticket at the price.

From what I have learned the hard way, I seriously suggest a mass Club group buy for all members, to take this time bomb out of their equation.

Aww David, that sucks man! Lasttime I tried to buy an ICV from toyota, I think it was almost a grand for a brand spanker! Ridiculous money. Hopefully it's just the difference in bobbin size that caused it to crack, as I have never heard of another one failing in this way. I have another TT icv at home in the garage, you can have it if you want it.

Hopefully it's just the difference in bobbin size that caused it to crack, as I have never heard of another one failing in this way

So how far into the mapping did you get before this happened, any idea on what sort of power it would make?

The ICV plastic T.T. and N/A tit sizes are identical, the T.T. has a stronger solenoid and I have been running this ICV on my N/A t.b. for ages.

It died before it was bolted to the dyno.

Sorry to hear this Dave, don't lose faith. Sounds like a good condition second hand unit is the way to go. Hopefully you will be up and running again soon.

David does the boss you have welded onto your intake pipe have a recess for the tt one way icv valve? If not, this 1-way valve should have stopped the broken parts of the icv from entering the plenum. Might be worth changing the boss to a TT style one which incorporates this 1-way flap.

Lee says that the AEM also, when you first power them up, extends the icv to its limit of its travel, this can cause it to get stuck/ might have caused it to break.

This little Mr T. item is serious silly money, yet I'm wondering if the plastic tit is available, for a 'get out of jail' 'almost free' for less than the cost of a Ford Fiesta option?

David does the boss you have welded onto your intake pipe have a recess for the tt one way icv valve? If not, this 1-way valve should have stopped the broken parts of the icv from entering the plenum. Might be worth changing the boss to a TT style one which incorporates this 1-way flap.

 

Lee says that the AEM also, when you first power them up, extends the icv to its limit of its travel, this can cause it to get stuck/ might have caused it to break.

That's a theory that removes any possible incompetence of mine, yet confirms the old plastic tit death scenario.

Before my next attempt, I will be incorporating a safety net of some sort, I will never trust an old tit again.

Really sorry to hear that David, I was looking forward to the results & hopefully a video to hear what the setup would sound like. Don't give up hope, you have been doing a superb job on this & it takes courage to dive straight into the unknown knowing anything could go wrong.

I hope you manage to find a cheap replacement charger & be back on your feet with this build.

sorry to hear this mate,As abz said you are a brave man doing the hole job from scratch.

your work is great and a insperation to us all, im sure now you dont have the deadline to get mapped you can get it all running 100% before the next bout.

Aww David, that sucks man! Lasttime I tried to buy an ICV from toyota, I think it was almost a grand for a brand spanker! Ridiculous money. Hopefully it's just the difference in bobbin size that caused it to crack, as I have never heard of another one failing in this way. I have another TT icv at home in the garage, you can have it if you want it.

James,

I accept your kind offer, thank you.

Yesterday I discovered there have been instances where ICV shrapnel has passed the T.T. one-way valve and destroyed the engine.

After sleeping on it.

Plan 'B' will incorporate a hunk of T.T. inlet plenum welded in-between the supercharger induction elbow and the T.T. ICV mount.

It won't need the valve because there won't be any positive pressure, just vacuum, but in the space for the one-way valve seating I will incorporate a little stainless tea strainer device as a safety net to prevent this happening again.

I need a T.T. induction plenum and an ICV adaptor to re-engineer.

If anyone has a beaten up old plenum I can cut a donor ICV seat off, please contact me.

sorry to hear this mate,As abz said you are a brave man doing the hole job from scratch.

your work is great and a insperation to us all, im sure now you dont have the deadline to get mapped you can get it all running 100% before the next bout.

Apart from the charge-cooler pump air-lock, the conversion worked perfectly, it was an OE component that let me down, the solenoid on those ICV's is like a miniature hammer drill and the old plastic tit decided it was the day to die.

The shock and strain from mincing the spring-steel and plastic into shrapnel has seriously bent the supercharger shaft, yet the supercharger bracket stood it's ground, the belt didn't slip or fly off and the 'Heath' PAS support passed with flying colours.

Does that mean C.W. owes me a pint?

Apart from the charge-cooler pump air-lock, the conversion worked perfectly, it was an OE component that let me down, the solenoid on those ICV's is like a miniature hammer drill.

 

The strain from mincing the steel and plastic into shrapnel has seriously bent the supercharger shaft, yet the supercharger bracket stood it's ground, the belt didn't slip or fly off and the 'Heath' PAS support did it's job.

 

Does that mean C.W. owes me a pint?

i think chris will hold out on that pint untill after its fully mapped

i was on about getting the hho generators up and running or not if they cant do as said on the tin

The information on how to set them up arrived by email yesterday morning and it should only take a couple of hours tinkering with buttons and fine tuning the electrolyte concentration to have them up to speed.

I wasn't too bothered they weren't included in the first equation as the initial set-up of this unique configuration will be work enough.

The front end is back on, so at least it doesn't look like an RTA.

At the big crunch, the belt load was at stock weight on the tensioner without any extra from the added adjustable spring tensioner and no belt slip.

I have checked and the PAS pulley is still running straight and true, if it can stand up to that it will take anything I may ask of it.

This pic shows the bent supercharger shaft or buckled pulley or both.

Sorry to read this, what a mess. Why don't you bin the stock IAC valve and fit a VW one like I did on Julian's (now Ibrar's) VVTi 2JZ-GTE? To be honest the stock ones are showing all kinds of signs of age now, sticking and breaking up included. You could also use an RB26DETT or RB25DET valve. Commiserations, I'll buy you a pint anyway !

Thanks for the heads-up, I'll take a look at the VW and Nissan options, yet with a Tetly tea-strainer instead of a one way valve, any future failure wouldn't be able to get into the mincer.

I'm looking forwards to a supercharged pint.

Bob to the rescue.

He was passing by on route between deliveries midday Friday, so the new towing eye was put to good use and 10 miles of shame later, he dumped me in his yard.

As he drove off, "Were going out at 7.30pm" he said, "No pressure then", I answered.

An hour later he was back and began grinding rust out of his van downwind with his misses upwind, painting a cast iron lampost with black Hammerite.

One-man fresco rural supercharged supra emergency pit-stop or war zone?

Plenty of knuckle wrestling, and lots of time spent searching through spanners to find one to fit the 14mm nut at the rear under the supecharger next to the manifold.

Because of the tapering form of the bracket to reach over under the bottom, the spanner I used to do it up wouldn't undo it.

Bob has an amazing collection of tools immemorial stashed here and there and eventually I found a 9/16" AF 90° swan neck ring-spanner of the perfect reach over the taper which engaged the nut squarely without fouling the induction pipe, that was long enough to reach to get hold of and short enough to clear the brake servo.

I wrapped a piece of tape around this tool (Treasure) to make it easier to find.

Keeping the front of the engine pretty has made the back of it busy and it would fit a lot easier fit with the top hose on the swirl pot moved around a bit, some adjustment of the heater hoses and I need to find a better way to plumb the brake servo pipework.

Armed with a complete set of Special Service Tools for the job and a few final-fit adjustments of the components whilst they are out, will allow pre-assembly of the awkward fiddle bits and with plug&play plumbing and electrickery as one complete unit, I could get the change-over time down to a couple of hours.

The wiring is now a dual system with long tails for on and offable swapability.

The charge-cooler appears to have caught the steel shrapnel, the shape of the pieces couldn't pass through the core.

The inside of the runners were sticky from the water pump grease I had used on the joint faces and a good finger wiping around all of them collected this much of dust, which appears to be all that remains of the plastic tit, Teflon and aluminum.

I gave this finger of Fairy Dust the old magnet trick, yet found no trace of ferrous material and if that is all that remained after passing the Eaton M112 pulveriser, it might get away with it.

The engine might even enjoy it's dynamic carbonite flame-dusting of Polyalloyteflon?

5 hours of knuckle busting and the old girl's up and N/A running again.

I should have taken the N/A bits with me on Dyno day, I could have done this there and drove home.

The refit sensor wiring is now a dual system with long tails for on and offable swapabillity.

It started up first go and ticks over sweeter than it ever has, I shall see how it fares.

Left it running during the tidy up and all was fine, but after 200yds in the direction of the pub, it was dead.

I had forgotten to disconnect the TPS on the Lexus t.b, so restarted the stock ECU which put the management lights out and fixed the engine, but the conflict of 2 different signals from the sensors has damaged the suprastick.

Gearchanges are now only achieved by; starting engine, use Suprastick manual mode in D to go 2 3 4, then use the stick to manually change up or down.

I will swap transmission control back to the stock ECU at the first opportunity and add that job to the growing list.

I did eventually get to the pub for a pint and dinner and caught up with a few errands.

On the brighter side, I forgot to mention; from the short time heard running on a base map, the engine sounded like a wild animal at leash.

Just caught up with this, can't belive whats happened. Everything is crossed for you David, and you manage to get a new supercharger soon, and see the thing go like it deserves to

least its running again, now its just a fed more bits to buy then back on the dyno mate. your get there in the end. how far was it to the dyno distance wise?

I can always rely on Noz for an alternative question.

It was in the straining position but not bolted to the hubs.

The dyno looked worried, which could be a good sign.

Just saw this news mate. Sorry to hear you were so close and something died. Hopefully you get it all sorted and dont lose faith.

Otherwise, we'll all have a long wait before someone else does it again

It's a right PITA, but had reached the point where I literally had to to suck it and see and the suck was too much for the ICV.

I am compiling a list of betterments learned from the working installation and destruction testing.