Eaton TVS R1320 supercharger rebuild and slight porting, with Dyno
Specimen was a previously bone-stock 2013 S4 6MT bought at 87k miles that currently has 94k miles on it.
Quick summary:
Installed my stage 2 dual pulley setup, and upon initial start-up inspection noticed louder than normal "rock-tumbler" noise emitting from the rear of the supercharger. Taking the supercharger belt off and starting the engine back up caused the noise to cease. Some quick Google searches led me to suspect the rear needle-bearings, and so my mind was made up to replace or rebuild.
- Audi wanted $2800 for a new unit, being how I was fresh out of warranty.
- Used units are relatively cheap, but I risked running into the same issue and didn’t feel like transferring my pulley if I could avoid it. Also, I had just changed the front snout oil and knew that the condition of the supercharger was otherwise great.
- After obtaining several quotes ranging from $800-1600 to rebuild with new rear needle-bearings, and after inquiring about pricing of porting the supercharger inlet and throttle body at the same time, I decided to take the job on myself to avoid the costs and reduce downtime of shipping the unit to and fro.
Disclaimer:
I have no prior experience with porting or rebuilding a supercharger so follow along at your own risk.
Supercharger rear bearings and oil
Parts list:
Source - SuperchargersOnline
2 x EATON BEARING GROUND OD HOUSING BEARING (EAT-101437) = $60.50
1 x EATON SUPERCHARGER OIL BULK FILL 8 OZ (001-60550) = $24.00
Total with Shipping $104.27
Confirm with the part supplier of the bearings that they’re factory lubricated, otherwise you might need to source lubricant.
And here are the extra parts if replacing the intercoolers.
Source - VW Suburban Auto Parts
Part Number Part Name Price Quantity Total
Intercoolers L and R, 06E-145-621-R Cooler Assembly $184.78 2 $369.56
Intercooler water pipe seals, 06E-121-119-D Washer $2.16 4 $8.64
Intercooler end seals, 06E-145-723-E Cooler Assembly Seal $23.23 2 $46.46
Throttle body seal, 06E-145-272-C Adapter Seal $11.63 2 23.26
Bypass valve o-rings, N90521604 O-Ring $6.64 2 13.28
Tools needed:
- 13mm socket
- 10mm socket
- 16mm wrench to remove supercharger pulley belt
- Assorted Torx (Including T30)
- Anaerobic gasket sealer (Audi, GM, or Loctite 518)
- 150ml supercharger oil (Audi part #G 070 000 A1, or Eaton Oil should be fine)
Torque specs:
- 20nm - 6 x Supercharger 13mm nuts
- 10nm - 6 x Intercooler bolts
- 5nm – 6 x waterpipe bolts
- ??? - I used 8nm for the Throttle body and bypass valve bolts. Not sure if that’s correct.
- 23-25nm – Supercharger snout bolts
Start by removing the supercharger. ECSTuning has an excellent removal guide as part of their magnetic supercharger drain plug install…recommend just using that.
http://bd8ba3c866c8cbc330ab-7b26c6f3...stallation.pdf
Here’s a quick summary pic.
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Once the supercharger is off, it’s worthwhile to inspect the intake runners for carbon build-up and clean as necessary. It was at this point that I also noticed an intercooler leak entering into intake #3, prompting the replacement of both intercoolers.
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Remove all of the valves, sensors, and brackets to prevent damage during supercharger disassembly.
Remove intercoolers using the steps below. Note that they’re extremely hard to remove from the casing without damaging due to the soft aluminum they’re made of. Be careful if hitting them with a rubber mallet…I thought I was being gentle with a deadblow and still managed to dent the end caps rendering them useless.
1. Gasket
[] Replace
2. O-ring
[] Replace
[] Coat with engine oil when installing the charge air cooler
3. O-ring
[] Replace
[] Coat with engine oil when installing the charge air cooler
4. Supercharger Housing
5. Gasket
[] Replace
6. Charge Air Cooler on the Right Side
[] Removing and installing, refer to CHARGE AIR COOLER
7. Bolt
[] 10 Nm
[] Replace
[] Self-locking
8. Gasket
[] Not available individually
[] May not be removed from the charge air cooler
[] Coat with engine oil when installing the charge air cooler
9. Bolt
[] 10 Nm
[] Replace
[] Self-locking
10. Left Charge Air Cooler
[] Removing and installing, refer to CHARGE AIR COOLER
11. Gasket
[] Not available individually
[] May not be removed from the charge air cooler
[] Coat with engine oil when installing the charge air cooler
Worth noting that all of the mating surfaces for the snout and rotor assembly as well as the rotor casings are precisely manufactured. Don’t use flat head screw drivers or anything else that can scratch the surfaces and be especially cautious when working inside by the rotor casing surfaces to avoid damage.
The supercharger snout can now be drained and removed. I didn’t worry about the orientation of the supercharger coupler spring since it only seems to go in one way.
Tough part #1:
The supercharger rotors come out as one long assembly with the bearing plate and take quite a bit of effort to remove. Note that the sleeved portion of the bearing plate that inserts into the housing is shy of an inch long – meaning that the whole thing has to slide out quite a bit before you’ll see the rotors. I was able to take a dead blow hammer and tapped the assembly top and bottom to loosen up the sealant. However, progress was slow and I wound up removing the bypass valve duct at the back of the supercharger and sticking a wooden dowel between the rotors – gently hitting the bearing plate from the inside. This is what finally jostled things loose enough to stand the supercharger up on the back and slide the assembly straight up.
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Inspect the inside of the supercharger for scuffing on the end plate, bearing plate, and rotors themselves. I noticed what appeared to be scuffing on the back of the end plate, but couldn’t find matching damage on the rotor. Two things to note:
- Scoring on the rear of the rotors and casing surface indicates excessive axial play dictated by the rear needle bearings. Thankfully, mine weren’t bad enough to cause interference, yet.
- End plate scuffing is indicative of excessive thrust play from worn drive ball bearings. You’re on your own with this one.
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Tough part #2:
When looking for pricing for a rebuild, one discouraging item was the $150+ cost thrown in just for the extraction of the needle bearings.
A few things to note:
- Different style needle bearings can be ‘pushed’ out by drilling and tapping the back of the housing for a grease fitting. This doesn’t apply for this design since the bearing is not cupped.
- It’s easier if you break the birdcage out and remove the needle bearings so you can use a larger blind-hole puller
- The factory blue grease contained in the bearings stains clothing / hands / etc
Typical blind hole bearing puller sets don’t have enough weight behind them to force the bearing out. I’m a fairly strong guy and found myself unable to budge the damn things with PB Blaster, some light heat (not to warp anything), and over an hour of slamming on the slide hammer. The alternatives are to make a pilot bearing adapter / bolt plate to thread the bearings out (didn’t work for me) or to weld together something that has enough weight behind it – hence the picture of my shitty welded nuts to adapt the blind hole puller to my 1” slide hammer.
I’m sure the professionals just use a machined plate of some sort and press the bearings out. Whatever options you use, just be extremely careful of the rotor casing surfaces as mentioned before. If you scratch the surface, you can probably use high-grit sandpaper to smooth things back out.
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On to the porting/polishing…
I’d recommend studying pictures of other port jobs from the internet to get an idea on what you can focus on. Since things are so precise with the supercharger, personally I found myself very reluctant to do more than just a slight porting and blending leading through the inlet and into the rotors. This part is totally up to you and what your comfort level is like.
$23 worth of harbor freight drum sanding and polishing materials later, I was grinding away at the supercharger inlet and removing casting marks leading into the rotor area. I’m not sure how much material is safe to remove, but as far as the immediate inlet portion the majority of aluminum was ground off 12-2 o’clock position and 5 o’clock position if looking straight in.
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The other area that seemed to get a lot of focus was the slight ledge leading into the rotors as well as the material by the PCV breather hole.
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Smoothing out the V-shaped outlet leading into the runners probably isn’t a bad idea. I didn’t port this – just ground down enough to help with the transition.
Deburring the runners down to the outlets (where the intercoolers sit) and smoothing the transition from the inside of the outlet probably isn’t a bad idea.
I also wound up porting the throttle body as well - just be careful not to thin out the bore too much, and also avoid disrupting the sealing area around where the throttle plate seats otherwise idle issues can occur.
Once you’re satisfied with the porting, clean the supercharger housing thoroughly with soap/water/air pressure and remove all remnants of the sealant from the mating surfaces. Avoid brake clean as I found it to be corrosive to the housing paint. Chase/clean the threads in the housing.
Inserting the bearings wasn’t nearly as bad as removal, and the whole process was expedited by throwing them in the freezer for a couple of hours and putting light oil on the outside of the bearing leading up to the install. If you want to cause people to cringe, you can gently hammer the bearings in with a bearing/seal installer OR if you’re a pro the better option is to machine press them in.
Make sure to depress the bearings slightly (.003”?) so that they don’t contact the rotors!
I wound up knocking one of the needle bearings out during the process – they’re press-fit in the birdcage and didn’t take much effort to loosen. If this happens just snap it back in and inspect the bird-cage for damage…you’re probably fine.
Sealing things back up is the same process as disassembly. Don’t get too crazy with the anaerobic sealant – however, the nice thing about this choice is it never dries if exposed to air and thus the excess can be wiped away at any point.
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Bolt the snout on in a criss-cross fashion starting with the inside bolts.
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I used a “meat flavor injector” from wally world to measure and inject the 150ml of oil into the snout of the supercharger. Make sure you don’t exceed the recommended volume as this can cause pressure to push oil past the seals – forcing you to rebuild/reseal again.
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Originally Posted by BadDesign
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