gen V blower seized up

I was getting on it today and the motor cut out. I was full throttle ding about 110mph when it happen. today is the first cool (75*) day of the season so im thinking i was seeing too much boost and ran lean.
Its all speculation at this point. all i know is the motor wont eve crank over. its acting like it is seized up.
I am going out now to pull the plugs and maybe drop the oil pan.

Anyone know a good place to get a used L32 motor online? zzp and other sell crate motors for $2600 which is more than i can spend right now, with my transmission blowing up 2 months ago.

Matthew

scratch that. the gen V seized up completely.

good thing i have my old gen 3 laying around

Darn...I hate to hear that !!!

You might want to check out WoodFins:

http://www.woodfins.com/Years/11-BUICK-RIVIERA-0230-80-Engine.html

how the F does this happen?

so should i grind off the built up aluminum and keep using this blower until me new ones comes in, or should i use the gen 3 in my garage? It would take me 2 seconds to grind the excess material so the rotor wouldnt catch, where the gen 3 would take some time getting all the vac lines redone to make it how it used to be.

Grind her,then rub her up with bar grease,fill her with some mix,let her rip!!! P.s make sure your scan gauge, is set to k.r?That way when the little lights are blinking,you can stop beating her, or you know!!! "MAYBE PUFF" Glad to here she didn't blow!!!

What the french?!? spontaneous rotor expansion?
What is the origin of all that meterial?

it appears as though the rotor caught the housing due to expansion, heated up enough so the aluminum liquified and came off the rotor, and transferred onto the housing. I just dont know why only one of the rotor packs did this.
I mean no parts are missing from my intake, the filter is good and the I/C core doesnt have anything stuck in it. So the material must be from the rotor itself.
Maybe the snout wasnt bolted up evenly putting stress on that rotor making it catch the housing?

melting point of aluminum is 1220°F...

It looks to me like your needle bearing cup at the end just gave it up.

I decided to swap the pulley system over form the gen V to my old gen 3. Dont think i can go back to that huge 3.4 pulley.
Bolting it up tomorrow. hope im not missing anything.

robotennis61 wrote:

It looks to me like your needle bearing cup at the end just gave it up.

looks like bearing fragged and your blower ate shrapnel but I can't tell, no pic of the bearing mounts in the other end of housing...

You might/should think about checking the lower intake for bits of metal, you think?

Did something bust off upstream and get sucked in?

Albertj

I'd say the bearings gave up as well. Though it could just as easily be the rotor pack end. Under boost, the rotors want to slide towards the needle bearings, and its the set in the gear end of the pack that keep that from happening. The needle bearings really just keep that end of the rotors from fluttering.(which could also be what happened, once they start to flutter, it all comes apart pretty fast)

Dude..... . I'm sorry. That fuggin sux. That seriously hurts me to see that, and it ain't even my problem.

Week just keeps getting better and better. I snapped a bolt that holds the blower to the I/C, and b/c the gen 3 is slightly different i am missing another bolt because the gen V ones are too long. The end of the bolt is stuck inside the LIM.

I also cracked the main bolt on my pulley puller (or rather my friends puller) And so i had to use a hammer and aluminum plate to carefully press the hub onto my old gen 3.

I broke one of the tabs that holds my fuel log down. It is zip tied for now, i just hope it holds under pressure.

And to top it off my battery is too dead to even crank the car over due to me messing with it all yesterday and today.
FML

Gen 3 WILL NOT seal on a gen V I/C due to the outlet being in different locations.
Looks like im going to have to use the gen V after all.

Crap, that really sucks, Matthew. Any idea what caused that needle bearing to fail? Was there enough oil in the blower? What's the history on the unit you bought (how many miles)? I can't remember ever hearing of an Eaton blower fail like this in all the years I've been reading about them. And with an IC, it's hard to believe it got too hot. Doesn't make sense, unless the bearing was just too worn.

Blower had ~40k on it when i got it. When i first started the car, after installing it, it had some snout bearing noise. This slowly got worse over a few months so i bought new snout bearing and had them installed.

Blower always ran fine and didnt seem to have much vibration to it after getting the snout rebuilt.
One thing that may have prematurely killed the needle bearings was when i ported the outlet i had tape over the bearing but some aluminum powder still got in there. I wiped them out a little but tried to leave as much grease in there as possible. Keep in mind this was over a year ago.
Also with the snout bearing worn there is a bit of wobble in the gears and rotors which may have contributed to the contact. If it wasnt from that then i got a defective unit from eaton.

I have another gen V, 10 grade 12.9 SHCS, and a main bolt for the pulley puller all on order. Hope the week gets better, have an exam tomorrow morning and a project due Wednesday(class), plus starting a huge new project at work tomorrow.
How does the saying go? When it rain...there is a hurricane?

Finally got my "new" gen V in the mail last night. Finished porting and installing today.
I also plugged the silencer ports with Quiksteel.
Still running the 3.2 pulley but i have a 3.0 i can run once i get a tune.


I'm working on making it really shiny, the paint seemed to hold in a lot of heat. I know its best to leave the surface rough but i like the look of a full polished blower.

Oh, and it screams louder than any other M90 i've heard with those ports closed. I'll gt an audio clip up soon.

Glad to see that you are up and running! I remember reading a while back that people were suggesting to change out the bearings after they ported and polished their blower. Maybe just enough of the dust got in the bearings and finally they just wore out. I wouldn't have thought it would take as long as it did though. Looking forward to hearing how much louder your "new" blower is.

Here is a video of the Gen V with the silencer ports closed.

This is with a 3.2 pulley, 75° ambient and im running next to construction barricades so that is the whooshing sound on the right side.
traction control was ON so it pulled a good bit of my timing/power from ~23mph when i went WOT to ~31mph when it detected i was able to get traction.



Sounds like a m62 with a really small pulley to me.

Wow that DOES sound a lot like an M62. Great work on recovering your project, by the way. I've been following the thread!

Now you need to find a nice tunnel and see just how loud that M90 can be...

Looks and sounds great! Glad you were able to put things back together so quickly. She climbs up the speedo so effortlessly, I admit I'm a little jealous.

Damn glad to see you got this back on the road and it does sound great. Make sure you check things out underneath the blower if it starts quieting down all of a sudden lol. I had no idea I lost a piece of my qwikweld filling before but at least you have some protection with the IC.
I say the gear wobble took the blower out. Once there's play around there, the rotors come in contact and one gets pushed in. - badly paraphrasing what James described to me

Thanks for all the support guys.

Cant wait to get to the track now!