A friend of my boss has an '08 FJ Cruiser with a TRD supercharger. Apparently it's exhibiting a knocking sound and has a vacuum leak external to the SC, probably on the outlet to intercooler.
Said friend of friend is not a mechanic and will not be taking this on himself. I am not local to him and am not involved beyond trying to find him a shop to take on the repair work. His location is Portland, OR. The only shop I know of who would be remotely interested and qualified is no longer in the area. Does anyone on the forum have a good shop in the Portland area you could recommend to take this on?
The knocking sound is hopefully the connector piece in the shaft. It is a plastic disk with holes in either side connecting the input shaft to the internals. It is the piece under the bottle of oil in the photo. This is a known failure/ware item in these.
Rebuilding these things is rather simple with some basic tools. Where it gets dicy is if there is damage to the impellers.
Your friend may want to look for rebuild shops and either send there unit off for a rebuild or see if some place does it on a core replacement basis.
In reply to dean1484 :
I did some poking around on that website (SCOL) just to learn what I could. That coupler is what I thought the knocking noise would most likely be, but going off 2nd-hand hearsay, I can't make any assumptions. The owner apparently doesn't have any mechanical ability, so we're trying to find him a local shop so he can drop the vehicle off and pick it up when it's fixed.
Bumpity bump. Nobody has any shops they'd recommend to take this on?
Take this for what you paid for it, and provided you don't get any other responses:
A friend of a friend is a former mechanic and now race-tire shop owner (and rally driver) in PDX. It ain't NYC, so my guess is, if you were to call him, he'd be able to point you in the right direction. Contact info here:
https://www.tracksideracetires.com/about
In reply to procainestart :
That's excellent. Thanks!
I did find what looks like a one-man Eaton specialist in Carlton. Looks like we are getting warmer.
In reply to procainestart :
Trackside is my go-to for Miata alignments and tires. They're rad and there's always at least one rally car in the shop to ogle.
I've never seen an Eaton go out of time, so the knocking sound is most likely the coupler. Easy to test by just removing the belt and rotating the pulley back and forth. Super easy to repair, too, just time consuming since you usually have to have the unit off the engine in order to pop the snout off.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
That's a good thought. I don't think the owner is mechanically savvy enough to remove the belt himself but that would sure be a quick way to isolate the noise.
I know a fair bit about M90s and a little bit about M62s.
I don't know what a Toyota would be running but I'll second the coupler as the likely cause of the clunk. Not a hard thing to replace, but be warned. The Supercharger oil in the snout smells like dog E36 M3. That's not a euphemism. The stench that emanates is that of feces.
