I'm doing a supercharger oil change while replacing the water pump and vibration dampener. There was a total of maybe a tablespoon of oil in the pulley side of the SC and ZERO in the water pump side. Should I be concerned?

Picture shows total oil remove!

Car only has 86K miles on it. Is this normal? Should I investigate further or just add oil and move forward.

 

Yes. I might be concerned with that little amount of oil drained out of either end of your supercharger.
You should take the snout off and check the gears and coupler for excessive wear. The coupler can be replaced with new.
The PTO/waterpump end gears and bearings are critical and I would be concerned if excessive wear. I believe you can replace the PTO/water pump gears as well. I have no experience in replacing those gears.
After cleaning the snout and PTO end; fill with AC Delco supercharger fluid/oil:
Snout= 140 -145ml (9.45 TBSP)
PTO/waterpump end = 40ml (2.7 TBSP)

Try not to overfill. Operating pressure/adgitation may cause leaks.

 

Catching this at 86K is a blessing, looks like it wasn't completely dry yet and I don't see any glitter in that oil. I think it's a recommendation at 100K, considering the low mileage that gear oil is probably just caked up inside of there from sitting around for so long. Keep us updated, this is one of every Gen1 owner's worst nightmares, those pinion gears just start dissolving after too much negligence.

 

I’m with the other comments, yes you should be a little concerned. Without knowing how long the supercharger has been running with no oil in that one chamber it’s hard to know what damages have been done. I’d also be concerned about the seals behind the cogs in the oil chamber as these have been known to fail and could explain the lack of oil in yours. Obviously you can just top up the supercharger again and if there’s no audible noises then it should be okay but you may run into some issues soon down the line. Would advise taking the supercharger to specialists sometime in the future to see if there’s any underlying damage.

 

The correct Eaton Supercharger Oil and the rubber shock absorber for the pulley end are available at Superchargersonline.com The highly toxic GM oil cannot be shipped into California but the Eaton oil is shipped FROM there. It’s what your supercharger was filled with when new.

Kurt

 

ok thank you...

I'll open both ends to inspect and cleaning the gears today.

The pulley end was under pressure. When removing the oil plug I unexpectedly heard the release of pressure as I removed plug. On the pulley side only?

 

Agree, we'll see what the inside looks like later today.. after I clean the gutters :(

It looked moist looking thru the plug holes at both side, thou nothing drained out the water pump side. Yet, I hope that's a good sign. Water pump was very dirty. I assumed that was from the green SC to air tube gasket... maybe not!?

I love and hate this car! This will be the third water pump for this car. The first was replace by the dealer at 40K!

 

Looks good inside I'd say. Claimed just a little more oil from the snout side.


Bentley manual doesn't say much about the supercharger. I'll try to find info on the torque specs for the gear cover bolts. Felt like 25-30 30 ft lbs. Also felt like there was thread locker on the snout side bolts as well? No gasket?


Picture shows leak point on water pump:

 

Looks remarkably good.
I had also serviced my original supercharger @85k. Although I did manage to extract about 134ml from the snout and about 30ml from the waterpump end.
I was also surprised to discover neither end had any kind of sealant or gaskets between the mating surfaces.
The condition of my supercharger looked as good as yours.

 

looks like new

 

I agree as @ssoliman had mentioned above - Your water pump looks to be fairly/if not, brand new.
I too am interested to know what that "weep hole" is all about.
It does appear to extend into/inside the impeller chamber where water may (or is intended ?) to leak or "vent" out.
Strange to me; as the Mini is the first and only water cooled car I've ever owned.

 

Yeah I'm happy the gears look good but know think the seals to the rotors might be bad, where did the oil go? Do you remember if you reassembled with any sort of sealant or gasket maker and the bolt torques?

 

The water pump was leaking from that vent area and down around the SC/air tube connection point, as seen from the underside of car:



With the core support out, looking straight between the water pump and SC/air tube, a little foam column had formed, like silly string texture, if you remember that stuff. I didn't take a picture directly but can be seen from other pictures taken.

 

Looks good from here, glad to see everything intact for ya! Good save Gear boxes tend to cause oil reduction through the friction and heat they generate, the stuff just eventually cooks down into a gelatin, no leak required.