O.k., I ended up sending the supercharger off 2 weeks ago to get it looked at and repaired if anything was at fault. I had a bad oil leak somewhere in the engine bay and I assumed it was the supercharger. After ATI received my p600b supercharger, they looked it over and told me it was the seal between the pulley and the charger itself. Cool, I thought to myself, I'm getting this problem fixed.

Well......... I put the charger back in a week ago and started the car up, no oil leaks, ect... THEN, I took it out for a little "spin" on the town. I wound the motor up to 6k ( to build boost ) and shifted, the car felt great, no belt slippage because it was a new belt and no oil on it. I was happy... Until I got home and opened the hood. Oil was all over my hood, Again! Not as much as before, but enough to make 3 hours of engine detailing , the day prior, a waste of time. So..... After the long story, what do you think. What the HECK am I doing wrong, or did I get a bad unit.

The only thing I could suspect is oil pressure or oil volume. I have an aftermarket oil cooler on the motor and I was thinking that maybe too much oil was getting sucked into the blower and was blowing this seal out, but am unsure if this is even feasible. I removed alot of oil (enough to where it was a little shy of the operating temperature line on the dipstick. My oil pressure reads a little over 3/4 of the way when the car is at idle and I'm using a stock oil pump.

BTW, my car is a '92 LT-1.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated. I'd like to get this problem resolved before I start the tuning and nitrous. There are a few SUPRAs in town that need a lesson in Corvette etiquette.

 

Hi,
Ask your question at this site, I think you'll get more responses.
http://www.thirdgen.org/cgi-bin/mess...=20&LastLogin=

Good Luck
t2k

 

I don't think your problem relates to you oil pressure i have a high pressure/high volume oil pump and my ati has been running for nearly three years without a problem. Sounds like you have a blower like a 55 chevy that i bought new it was broke all the time yes all companys make Lemons. I would call ATI they can do more for you than anyone on this forum. EXample no one here can give you another blower ati can probably not but they could i would talk to them about this. :yesnod:

 

black bart,

Thanks for the info. I've called ATI and arranged for them to receieve it if there is in fact a problem. Dorian had told me to make sure I don't have excessive crankcase pressure so I'm going to check for that today as well (man, too many things to do).

Thanks for the replies

 

Man I really feel your pain brother :cuss

I agree, you need to pursue this with ATI, and their customer service sucks!

I dread should anything similar happen to mine. I have mine in for 3 years and no similar problems, just low boost.

One thing to check is to make sure that your oil return line is not kinked or have any funny bends, etc. Also make sure your oil supply line is not starved. Teflon tape could cause that.

I always wondered if there was a really great machine shop that could fix these when ATI goes belly up from lousey customer service. I mean, there has to be somebody else out there that can work on these things. Just a thought.

Flame Red

 

check your connections between the fittings and the oil lines. My ati system leaked from lack of good seal.

 

Fittings on the hoses themselves? I'll check that. I already checked to see if the the charger was leaking where the oil sending line and return line connect to the charger and it didn't seem to be there. Alot of the oil on the hood seems to be concentrated around the passenger fenderwell. I'll check and see what's up.

Thanks for the reply

 

Janaelen if you are running the stock breather system you will have excessive pressure in the crankcase that pressure will travel up the oil return line to the blower. My first setup was K&N style breathers on both valve covers but at high rpm i would get a mist of oil on the valve covers. BUMMER I now have two oil separators one on each valve cover with stainless braided hose to one way valve connected to 1/2 inch pipe welded into the side of collector. These are the same thing that you see used on rails at the drags any oil is sucked into the exhaust and burnt. you lose very little oil but it makes a vacuum in the engine. i also have a polished aluminum pvc valve installed where the oil fill was it is connected to throttle body and provides vacuum while engine is just cruising. All of these items are available from Summit. I would not be too harsh on ati many on this forum are far too quick to blame others for their mistakes. When you make modifications to your car then you take on the roll of automotive engineer if you don't get it right :nopity Hope this helps you with your problem. :cheers:

 

black bart,

I was looking at the car and noticed several things you told me to look for. First of all, the passenger valve cover where the PCV valve is supposed to go branches off 2 ways (doesn't have PCV, just a Plastic fitting that accomodates a 1/2" hose). One way goes into the K&N filter for the intake of the supercharger and the other went into the intake manifold. I'm in the process of re-doing this so that I can plug the manifold up and run that hose from the passenger PCV valve fitting straight to the K&N. Another problem I saw was a cracked vacuum line coming from the manifold. The FMU and the Bypass valve were connected to these, so I'm assuming this maybe the reason I'm running excessively rich. We'll see. I'm going to work on it the rest of tonight and I'll post what I find.

(My K&N filter has accomodations for a 1/2" hose to be connected to the center of it so whenever there is vacuum, it'll be filtered. If this isn't a good way to go, someone speak up please.)

 

Janaelen I would not run it into the supercharger intake you will get oil fumes that will coat the impeller of the blower and eventually coat the intercooler which will reduce the intercoolers efficiency :nono:
Install a pvc valve and connect it to the throttle body it has a place for pvc hose. Sounds like you have a multitude of problems did you read my post to you question about max boost.

 

Well, tonight I did the following:

Ended up changing the oil and filter in the car (Darn Fram HP4s are EXPENSIVE), because of a BAD misshap that caused me to lose almost all the oil in the car. :nopity:
I plugged the hole on the manifold (driver's side) that had PVC line running from it.
I also Plugged the PCV valve provision and removed my oil cap and replace it with a breather from Autozone (I sure hope this was the right one because it was the only one I could find at midnight).
I then removed the fitting in the center of my air filter and plugged that as well.
Also when I checked the vacuum lines, I found that a vacuum line was cracked and it happened to be the one routed to the FMU and Bypass Valve so I fixed that and now the car seems to be idling a little smoother (well the smoothest a car can idle with a big cam) and my A/F ratio meter seems to be calmer at idle and crusing. And, believe it or not, the FMU works now :yesnod:!

Tommorow I figure I'll pull the supercharger, do a good degreasing of the belt and all the pulleys and put it back together. Hopefully I would have picked up a little boost and gotten rid of that pesky seal blowing problem.

Even though it's a little work, it's great being able to fix these little problems and gain some power!

Just out of curiousity, would I lose some boost with the way it was setup before? (Manifold hole routed to the PCV valve hold and center of the air filter)

Thanks in advance


[Modified by Janaelen, 3:20 AM 9/20/2001]


[Modified by Janaelen, 1:44 PM 9/20/2001]

 

Bart,

Thanks for the idea. I have had tubes going from my valve covers to the filter on the blower. I have learned that this will flow oil into the intercooler, as you said, and that it coats the mas air flow wires and makes air metering less accurate. Are you saying that I should take the tubes from the valve cover (oil fill) holes and run the to the plenum? Please advise.

Thanks,

Matt

 

YES be sure you have a pvc to prevent boost from going into rocker cover. read my post about four or five above this where i explained it to Janaelen


[Modified by black bart, 12:25 PM 9/20/2001]

 

Janaelen do not connect the hose from your pcv valve to the inlet of the supercharger connect it to the throttle body.I'll bet you have been complaining about lack of boost you had hose from your intake manifold going to air breather on your supercharger you put boost into the manifold and then suck it out. You stated that that hose was connected to another hose and it went into the valve cover on the other side of engine so your boost was also blowing into the rocker cover. Hell man no wonder you are having problems with boost and oil seals. Carefully read the post that i put above the one about evacuating your crankcase. You need to get someone to help you straighten out your system.

 

black bart,
I have one breather in the valve cover on the passenger side. It's where the oil cap used to be. Do you think this is enough or will I have to cut a hole in my other valve cover and run another breather?

thanks in advance for the info.

*Update* I took the car out for a spin and aside from belt slipping *due to the oil Explosion I had last night* the car was running fine and didn't really notice any oil spray. I'm going to clean up the belt and degrease everything now and see if I can see any oil coming out now, and hopefully I picked up soem boost.

 

You should have a hole on both sides. Don't you have oil fill hole plus breather hole on one side and another hole on the other side. I have pvc in hole where the oil fill cap was and two breathers where the other two holes are

 

No, the car has the oil fill hole and the PVC hole on the passenger valve cover and on the driver's side there's nothing. These valve covers are the stock ones.

I thought the same thing to myself because my '85 had holes on both valve covers.

 

Well in a case like that I quess I would try it with one breather. What type breather do you have on it now.

 

I've finally put everything back together and took the car out for a spin. It wasn't boosting anymore, but no there doesn't seem to be a leak.

I found another problem this afternoon which has led me to beleive this was the source of the large amount of oil found under my hood. The return line from the supercharger was rubbing aganist the crank pulley and whenever oil was fed down, it was hitting the belt and the pulley allowing oil to drench the belt and get thrown off all over the engine bay.

It's like they always say, "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself!"

Anyway, thank all of you for the help with the system. Even though I didn't gain any boost, at least I located some problems with the install and fixed them before they developed into something major.

 

Don't laugh.... I purchased one from Autozone last night. It's an Edelbrock low profile chrome one. WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE CHROME? It's so hard to keep clean. Anyway, do you think this would suffice. It's not an open element breather.