Supercharger Coupler Condition at 50K

I had my supercharger off for preventative maintenance on the cooling system and decided to replace the supercharger coupler. This a 2016 model year with just over 50K. The supercharger pulley had about 3-5 degrees of free play (before spring tension catches in forward or reverse). It was making a little noise - not too bad. The isolator didn’t look too bad either, but the spring was surprisingly loose in the body of the coupler. I couldn’t tell if this was as designed or not - nothing seemed to be broken or badly worn, but it sure didn’t look right to me. See pics. Slight grooving in the shaft, but not too bad.

The replacement itself is super simple if you’ve got the supercharger off for other reasons. Remove bolts (including one inside the throttlebody) and pry the snout off from the pry point on the drivers side of the supercharger (remove the manifold on that side to get a good purchase on the pry point). Old coupler slides off, and new one slides on. Used the Eaton brand solid coupler. Seal it back up with a very small bead of RTV.

But, at 50K (at least on mine), I don’t think this was bad enough to warrant a separate repair.

jlglr4 said:

I had my supercharger off for preventative maintenance on the cooling system and decided to replace the supercharger coupler. This a 2016 model year with just over 50K. The supercharger pulley had about 3-5 degrees of free play (before spring tension catches in forward or reverse). It was making a little noise - not too bad. The isolator didn’t look too bad either, but the spring was surprisingly loose in the body of the coupler. I couldn’t tell if this was as designed or not - nothing seemed to be broken or badly worn, but it sure didn’t look right to me. See pics. Slight grooving in the shaft, but not too bad.

The replacement itself is super simple if you’ve got the supercharger off for other reasons. Remove bolts (including one inside the throttlebody) and pry the snout off from the pry point on the drivers side of the supercharger (remove the manifold on that side to get a good purchase on the pry point). Old coupler slides off, and new one slides on. Used the Eaton brand solid coupler. Seal it back up with a very small bead of RTV.

But, at 50K (at least on mine), I don’t think this was bad enough to warrant a separate repair.

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Yeah except the issue is that the spring will snap at some point. Then depending on the size of the break there is some small chance that some metal or plastic gets broken off and sent into the supercharger or airstream into the intake. Shavings, fragment,whatever. The rattling and play is kind of a non issue but it might not be the end of the process of part failure.

I should hope so that the supercharger would not need repair after 50k miles.

This should be a 200k mile minimum problem..

@ktm525 - You’d think it should be about 200K. But Land Rover has a TSB for this particular problem. It’s also been a problem reported in the jags and I think it was a big problem on the cadillac at one point. All related to using a tortional (spring) isolator. Anyone under warranty should probably take it to the dealer and insist they hear the clacking sound and point to the TSB. My dealer said it was just the normal sound of the fuel pumps, but it wasn’t. I can clearly hear a difference now that it’s gone.

@Fuji4 - Looking through a lot of forums on this, I have seen some reports that the isolator just fell apart upon removal. But most of the time, it seems the isolator spring just gets compressed and the spring starts to wear into the shaft a bit. In the older ones, the spring would actually wear through the plastic, but the newer ones (including mine) had a metal clip that prevented that particular problem.

The metal shavings are definitely an issue because they will wear the snout bearings. But I don’t think they can get into the combustion chamber - I believe there is a bearing further up the snout shaft that effectively isolates that part of the snout from the rest of the sc. Not positive though.

This video turned up on the RR forum for a RRS supercharged. Gives a decent illustration of the process of pulling the supercharger and removing the snout. I hadn’t seen this in all my research, so thought I’d post it in case it’s helpful to others.