Well, I guess you could say this is a follow-up to the verrrry long post we did for the install. A most unhappy follow-up, unfortunately.

We have been driving the Z for the last two weeks and my husband has been taking it back and forth to work. The boost was great and the car was a blast to drive with absolutely no complaints. All told, we put about 600 miles on the car during that time. We did note that the supercharger was sounding louder and louder when we first started it up but it would quiet down in a minute or two and everything seemed fine so we pressed on.

Five days ago, while driving home, my husband noted a sudden change in the 'turbine noise' coming from the engine. There was a low, coarse vibration but the engine continued to run so he finished the last 10 miles to home. Once in the garage, he left the engine running and opened the hood. The supercharger was literally squealing and was so loud it hurt my ears. We shut it down and checked all the belts and pulleys and hoses, etc. (all the external things) and nothing was out of order.
The next day we went over the car again and did not find anything wrong. We decided to drive it around our little neighborhood (so we would not have far to walk if anything went wrong). The noise and vibration got louder and harsher and just before we took the car home we got the VDC, SLIP and SES lights turn on and the car went into 'limp home' mode. We got the car home in a minute or so and stopped the car immediately and checked the codes on Cipher.
We had a problem with the Throttle Actuator Control Module and the Wheel Speed (ECU code P2101 and ABS code C1131), supposedly. We have checked with some trusted sources and have been told that this can be seen when the throttle actuator acts up and there is a TSB out on it for repair under warranty. Any other thoughts or input on this would be appreciated. We hope that we have not FOD'ed (foreign object damage) the engine.

Of course, this does not explain the supercharger 'melt down'.
We took the supercharger off and this is what we found (see pictures below).

We also found that the central shaft was bent and moved up and down when we spun the turbine blade and there was the sound of pieces moving around inside of the housing. As you can see, one of the blades has disintegrated and the others had been hitting the housing with three of them having damage/curling at the end of the blade where they had been hitting/scrapping the housing.

It looks like the bearings were defective and the turbine was loose in the housing and struck the sides causing even more damage and breaking off one of the blades (which we have still not found). The throttle body error codes (hopefully) were co-incidental and we are still looking into that. We are going to take the charge-cooler off and blow air back through it to get rid of any remaining bits and pieces, get the supercharger replaced under warranty, and put everything back together. We would appreciate any input as to other things we should be looking for, fixing, etc. when we do the rebuild.

There have been a few threads about the recent spate of Vortech failures and I hope this helps others to recognize the symptoms before serious damage happens. We are still convinced that the Vortech is a good way to go FI and will be back amongst the ranks as soon as possible.

 

you know a lot about car stuff for a lady

 

^ That's a stupid thing to say.

Sorry 'bout your troubles. You might want to take the plenum off and see if there's any damage inside of it just in case if any of the pieces found their way up there.

 

 

Definitely defective bearings....hope you didn't suck any of the blade debris into the motor...

Good luck.

 

that looks and sounds just like my Vortech.

 

+1 on both accounts....

Take a look at the trottle body flap and see if there's any noticable damage. Then work your way back into the plenum. Look for anything from big to fine, sand-like particles of debris. If you notice any, you may want to consider flushing the motor at a minimum... I'd probably tear it down just to be safe, but that's a little more work than most would want to consider.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

i am working with vortech to see what we can do to help out on this

 

Although it maybe possible , I dont think any metal was able to make its way through the intercooler and up into the motor .

I would take off the blower , disconnect the intercooler pipe between the intercooler and the MAF and put a filter on it . Reset the ECU and start it up and see if your CEL stays off

 

sure does seem they had a bad batch go out......

 

Agree. But I'd still take a look at the tb and plenum just to be on the safe side... If there's nothing there, then great.

I think it goes without saying - ditch the old intercooler and get a new one. IF debris made it through, then it's shot without any question. Either way, it's not with the risk IMO.

 

+1. We've seen a few of these failures from Vortech lately. Very disappointing....

 

I think the IC could be back flushed to push out the metal .

 

its VERY possible that it made it through the intercooler. trust me.


i would take the plenum off and clean everything you can. more than likely everything should be just fine. but make sure you take all the steps to help out.

 

WOW that really sucks, is this common with the vortech kit? That is not normal at all especially being a new kit. The TB I can understand, they don't react well to S/C for some reason. My buddy has a vortech and his went out a month after he purchased his Z (already installed) and mine went out after 10k of having my Stillen kit installed. My guess would be the high amounts of heat generated causes failure in these units. Good thing Nissan is making reman units for cheap GL!

 

All these threads just makes me want to go with JWT 530BBs

 

Something is definitely going on with a recent batch of Vortech SC's that went out. There are just too many new SC's going bad with the exact same issue for it to be a coincidence. My SC did the exact same thing and sounded exactly like what the OP described in her first post. It was a horrible high-pitched metal on metal sound. The upside is that Vortech is getting and returning these "bad" SC's pretty quickly. The turn around time is about 3 weeks.

 

Ouch! Sorry to hear this. Seems to be wide spread. I've been following vortech threads lately trying to decide if I should pull the trigger on a SC build.

I sure hope no foriegn objects (Ie. impeller blade fragments, etc) got sucked into the engine~ Best of luck to all that are having problems. :-(

 

Hey Lady Jax

If you find metal spec's or shavings in the plenum . COuld you take a pic for us and post it ? I sure hope there isnt any !!!

 

Sorry to hear. There have been way too many similar accounts lately. Hopefully you'll be up and running soon. GL