dirty s/c

has anyone ever seen the inside of a s/c? i did. its filthy! the s/c vanes are coated with black soot! any thought on how best to clean them without damaging the unit?

DO NOT CLEAN THEM! its not soot, it is teflon coating to keep pressure in the housing.
but if you want to clean the TB opening or the inside of the snout you can use intake cleaner or even break cleaner and a towel.

no. this stuff was caked on and black. i know, teflon is grey, but this stuff was soot.

Someone educate me, but even if it is dirt, what's it hurting being on the rotors?

Nothing actutally it is adding a hair of effenciy to the blower by tighten the tolerance.

I'd leave the rotors alone .

This guy sprayed them down with brake cleaner:

www3.sympatico.ca/aepa/blowerinstall.html

1998 Riv wrote:

This guy sprayed them down with brake cleaner:

www3.sympatico.ca/aepa/blowerinstall.html

He sprayed down the nose drive and the gears. Not the rotors.


this is a picture of some rotrs that started to strip.

I read his notes to mean he sprayed the rotors.

Quote :

First step of putting everything back together was to take some brake cleaner and spray down the rotors and behind to get rid of all the black guck, afterwards it was all nice and clean

I'm not saying it should be done, but Will clearly did it.

1998 Riv wrote:

Quote :

First step of putting everything back together was to take some brake cleaner and spray down the rotors and behind to get rid of all the black guck, afterwards it was all nice and clean

I'm not saying it should be done, but Will clearly did it.

Wow! he ruined some rotors.

Ruined with brake cleaner? I'd think there must be some acceptable, safe, way to clean them when needed. I think when guys spray too much oil on their K&N filters, oil gets pulled in and could result in filthy rotors.

1998 Riv wrote:

Ruined with brake cleaner? I'd think there must be some acceptable, safe, way to clean them when needed. I think when guys spray too much oil on their K&N filters, oil gets pulled in and could result in filthy rotors.

Castrol superclean or simplegreen is ok. I think brake cleaner could be used but I wouldn't use it.

thats what began to happen to my rotors. i applied carb cleaner but the c/b softens the teflon. but i stopped in time to prevent more damage. as it is,some of the teflon (small amount stripped off in a couple areas. but not to the extent above. i just poured some sea foam in the rotor chamber and that seemed to loosen up what was very thick soot! but i wont recomend anyone doing what i did. as oldsman sed, simple green might have worked better. "live and learn" btw, i wonder how much efficiency is lost if the rotors are stripped of their teflon? or even if it would work at all? im calling a specialist to find out.

just called rick at superchargers and accesories,he sez that from 92 to 93 to 95, the design hasnt changed. the tolerances are the same,with teflon/without. he sed you wouldnt notice the difference. no power loss. and he added that the quality of teflon used wasnt that great. i might have mine rebuilt soon anyway as i have play in the bearings. ill have mine served without teflon please! he can furnish rebuilts with teflon and without. btw how difficult is it to replace the s/c bearing?

one more thing. i suppose if just a tiny piece of teflon managed to get into one or more of your injectors, that would cause a major clog that no amount of injector could fix!!!

If you want to clean them, I would probably just use hot water and a soft brush to knock off the big chunks of carbon. The teflon in theory should provide a tighter tollerance between the casing and the rotors. But over time it naturally comes off. You probably wouldn't notice any difference with the teflon gone.

robotennis61 wrote:

one more thing. i suppose if just a tiny piece of teflon managed to get into one or more of your injectors, that would cause a major clog that no amount of injector could fix!!!

The teflon would just get sucked into the combustion chamber and burn up. The amount of air flowing into your engine would suck it right in. There shouldn't be a chance that the teflon would get stuck in your fuel injector because the fuel system is seperate from the supercharger.

right! peace of mind . guess i wasnt thinking! but what about the bearing. do you think its possible to replace it oneself? i would tackle it, but a mechanic told me that its too much trouble...what do you guys think?

Here's a little info: http://www.zzperformance.com/grand_prix/products1.php?id=157&catid=106

super info 98riv! as soon as mine hit the dirt,im replacing them as per your info. no problem! my cuz has a press and i dont see any probs in the future. thanks! .

From personal experience anything that cleans well.. may strip the coating off. Looking back on what I know now...I would strongly suggest to anyone considering cleaning them to back away and not do it.

Here is my reasoning. That thin coating is all it takes to add 3-5lbs of boost. Any soot, carbon or whatever on the rotors is only tightening the tolerances further and creating more boost pressure. Cleaning them and taking the chance of stripping the coating costs you 3-5lbs of boost. I know from personal experience.

The next thing you need to consider is the bearing in the rotor plate. This is the plate that they pass through and the gears are on the other side. Bearings with lubrication that you can't replace. If you lose that you lose the rotors, plate etc.

My first mistake cost me $300 and that seemed cheap at the time. That's money we can all spend better.

Use your time and efforts to smooth the rough casing inside the inlet and into the compression chamber. That will help the air be slightly cooler and give you more power.

i dont know. but from what i can feel, the car feels so much smoother now. there is no way im going to leave milimeters of soot coating the s/c rotors. it came from the factory clean ,and itl go down the road 114000 miles later clean too!! leaving all that dirt encrusted on the rotors doesnt make sense. ive got gobs more power now along with a spankin clean throttle body and manifold. all thats left is welding up a couple of cracks in the headers and it should run like gangbusters......

According to Billboost's post, leaving the rotors alone does make a lot of sense. How much more power are we talking about with "gobs"? Is this something that can be proven on a dyo or at the track?

well.." gobs" to me means that the car runs alot more powerful on the highways and feels much stronger from a start. of course the throttle body cleaning did alot of the work. but, leaving all that soot might up the boost somewhat but, that just seems like dirty air flow to me! a clean interior engine is allways a better one. i dont know if it was anybodys plan to let the rotors gather as much junk as possible in the hopes of gaining a few lbs of boost! i dont like the idea of all that dirt spinning away furiously in my s/c. just me!

A good TB cleaning will do wonders for the way a 3800 runs.

As for the clean top end, you may want to look into disabling the EGR if you want to keep things clean.

yeah i was thinking about that too. on my legend i fab,d up a metal plate to covor the hole. i might even get a breather filter in place of the pcv.