Brian's Blog » procharger

Yup, It’s Mine

Brian — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 03:16:37 +0000

I changed out the belts on quadzilla today. Without the supercharger, this is a 4 minute job, with the supercharger, it takes me a couple of hours. I have to take off the intake tubes, the fan shroud, and finally the supercharger and bracket. The big belt snakes through a bunch of bolts/spacers that have to be completely removed to change it out. The bearings in one of the idler pulleys was going bad and making lots of noise. This is the fourth idler pulley I’ve had to replace. PITA. Anyway, when I was getting it cleaned up, the big ProCharger emblem was loose, so I just took it off so I could clean the grim good. I was surprised when I saw my name written underneath the emblem. I feel special now, they assembled this blower just for me!

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New Pulley for Quadzilla

Brian — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:28:09 +0000

So after a day of going through the vacuum system on Betty and failing to fix the transmission shift problem (but learning what all those plastic hoses go to), I decided to spend a little time on quadzilla. I’ve had a noisy belt problem for a long time now, so I figured it was a good time to get that resolved. I also wanted to change out the supercharger pulley with a smaller one to get a little more airflow, you know, because airflow is a really good thing. As usual, my driveway started to accumulate parts.
Fan shroud, supercharger, filter, and the FMU (gone for good). The engine compartment looks empty without all that stuff in there.
I cleaned up all the oil and grime and put the blower in the vice to make the pulley change easy. (you pretty much have to have an impact wrench to get that pulley bolt off). I also replaced the top idler pulley; it was starting to feel rough. I think this is the 3rd one I’ve replaced.
My pulley collection. Original was 4.25″ and produced 8psi, the second one is 3.7″ and made about 10psi, and the new one is 3.4″. I don’t know what it will do yet, my tune is not up to snuff and I haven’t pushed it yet, but I did notice more bypass chirping noise at 70MPH today, so I know it is blowing more air.
The Procharger rep couldn’t tell me what size of belt I needed. He said it would probably be a 111.5″ or a 111.0″. The second picture shows my old 111.625 belt (probably stretched a little) with the tensioner held off all the way. 1.5″ of deflection over a 6″ span is how much belt? (I’ll have to ask some of my smart friends to solve that one) I did solve my belt noise problem. I took a toothbrush and degreaser to all the pulleys and the belt too. Total cleanness seems to be the secret.

The Case for Owning a Toyota

Brian — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:47:06 +0000

The neck of the filler cap on my 2 gallon methanol tank is made of steel. Everything else in the system is either stainless or plastic. So the neck has corroded and little flakes of rust have been falling into the tank and eventually taken off to the nozzle filter. I couldn’t find another filler cap that was the right size made out of plastic or stainless so I decided to paint it, in hopes that the paint would offer a good resistance. Well, two days of use and I see that the paint is already loose and soft. I called the manufacturer and learned they do make a chrome plated model that might hold up a little better, but they have a minimum order requirement. So now I need to find a reseller.

As I was re-installing this cap, I found that the bolts were all buggered up. I got my tap & die set out to see if I could salvage them. After lots of trial fits and scratching my head, I figured out that the bolts were metric and the nuts were SAE. Good grief, some numnut didn’t much care what he was doing when he put this together. Auto parts stores near me don’t carry a very good selection of stainless fasteners either, but I found some suitable ones at Lowes.

So why do I have a custom-fit 2 gallon methanol tank? Because, when I ordered my supercharger kit, I upgraded it a bit so that I could order a smaller pulley to get more boost. Before I could use the extra boost, I had to deal with the problem of knocking due to the fuel not having a high enough octane rating to resist the extra pressure. (spraying a mist of alchol and water into the intake air raises the octane rating of the fuel) Oh, there was also the copious amount of extra fuel needed too, but I had that taken care of already, upgraded injectors and replaced the fuel pump, which of course required upgraded relays and wiring. So now I have an issue with belt squeel. It sounds like one of my idler pulleys is going out, again. (replaced both of them once already) I don’t think people who drive Toyota Camerys have these type of problems. These are self-created problems. I actually like these problems, except that I don’t have enough time or money to keep up with them!

Quadzilla has been pretty neglected this year. All the time I’ve spent out of town and my vegetable garden projects have really taken away from the autos. To relolve my belt squeel problem, I ordered a new idler pulley, and while I was on the phone, I went ahead and had Procharger send me a 3.4″ drive pulley too, which might get me up to around 12 or 13 psi of boost. Tech support says anything smaller than that will require me going to an 8rib setup, which is about $1000 to get new pulleys for everything that belt goes around. I need to go ahead and switch to a speed density tune, since the MAF is out or range at the upper end already. Oh, and my rear diff or rear bearings are going out too…