Celicasaur

Hey guys, the supercharger on my E55K seems to be on it's way out. It's doing the dreaded continual squeak - we suspect it's the rear bearings that apparently are unserviceable according to what the interweb has told me in the past, but perhaps things might have changed in recent years that I'm not aware of. Is it possible to get these units rebuilt with a fresh lease of life, or is my best bet to source a used one from eBay or a breaker? FYI it's not the front pulley bearing and that's been recently replaced anyway.

Are Shardul/Brooke from UPD still about these days? I wonder if they might know or be able to assist.

machild

@nemiro recently posted about working/rebuilding his SC. Find his posts and see what he says about that bearing. May reach out to him too.

nemiro

I used a pair of bearings from Benz Performance (BP). While their front bearings and seal seem to be OK, the rear bearing setup left a lot to be desired. It is not an original style, and one of the bearings failed outright in almost exactly 400 miles of driving. I then sourced a Chinese knock off of the original NTN bearings, and procured 4 of them. Simultaneously, I found someone who had two original NTN bearings available. I bought those, also, and installed them just this past week. I took comparison photos of the original NTN bearing and the Chinese bearing. The Chinese one is actually pretty much spot on copy of the originals, and the quality seems to be there. They do come dry (no grease) and I have not figured out what grease to use in them, yet. I have a second SC here that I will rebuild with one pair. They are fairly inexpensive, compared to trying to get NTN to reproduce them, and certainly much higher quality than the ones I received from BP. Not trying to knock BP, but I literally threw out a second set of their bearings I had purchased. Their front section bearings that they are offering appear to be original NTN (or good knock offs). They seem to work just fine.

I have one pair of these Chinese rear bearings I could part with. I'll sell that at what they cost to have brought here, without the lengthy wait. The other pair are going to go into my spare SC, as soon as I decide on the grease. @machild may have a good idea on which grease to use.

machild

I have no idea.

herpderp

In addition to the Mobil jet oil II ?

nemiro

This would be grease for the rear bearings. The oil is for the front section.

nd-photo.nl

The oil is for the cogs/gears in the front indeed.


Hes talking about this type of grease

herpderp

Thank you! I didn't realize the rear bearings were self contained and weren't lubricated by the small amount of oil dedicated to the supercharger.

Subscribed and slightly worried!

austingtir

I put that red redline cv grease in my rear supercharger bearings. Seems fine and quitened them down a bit.


People need to realize in many cases there will be no need to actually replace the bearings if you just clean the old dry (almost gone) grease out of them thoroughly and put new stuff in there weather its redline or proper supercharger bearing grease if you can find it imo it doesnt matter. anything will be better than whats in there (obviously you want a high temp grease that resists flinging out) especially if you car has done over 120k miles without them being touched.


Everyone seems to go on about the supercharger oil but imo the rear bearings should be serviced more often than that oil.

nemiro

I'll get some of that. Thanks!