SoK Supercharger Install

kirkf · 10:13 PM

This thread will document me pulling apart my freshly rebuilt motor to install a SoK supercharger setup.

Goals:

1. Install Supercharger. (Bet you already guessed that)
2. Replace front axle shaft CV boots
3. Diagnose problems after last rebuild. (Running slightly rough. General feeling of 'not quite right')
4. Install front shock tower brace.
5. Replace plug wires.
6. Install aftermarket boost / a-f meter (brand undecided)
7. Replace lug nuts. (I know a minor item but its on the list)
8. Replace tail (necessary for the intercooler)
9. Remove DMF and replace with LWF. (DMF not capable of handling intended HP)
10. Replace transmission input shaft seal.
11. Replace engine compartment sound pad

As many of you know I documented my motor rebuild last year. Since that time I have put only about 1500 km on the car. I just got past the initial breakin and I was about to look at solving some of the remaining issues. So don't be too critical with what I find because although its been 9 months, I haven't really had a chance to dial anything in yet. Its still in the 'just started up after a rebuild phase'

I managed to pick up a used SoK supercharger kit out of Toronto. So any final tweaking of the rebuild was put on hold since the motor was going to come back out and get completely disassembled again.

So far I have pulled the motor out and got the exhaust off. To make a long story short this is about 6 weeks behind schedule. First I had to finish drywalling and painting the garage, then I had to move all the stuff out of my basement because we are having some work done there, and to top it off my garage floor is getting epoxy coated in late august so I have to minimize the number of items out there as well. And right now I am home 1 week a month because of work... So its a juggling act getting this done.

Motor Removal
------------------

I didnt take any pictures of the motor removal. There is already tons of documentation out there on the process. It was hot here (34C) and apparently I should have put some A/C in my garage... Anyways 5 hours and a bit of struggling and it was up on the engine stand.

-There was some oil contamination in the transmission bellhousing again. The RMS is dry and so is the oil breather, oil sensor etc. I assume this is from transmission oil leaking past the input shaft. So thats why item #10 replace seal is on the list.

-Cylinder #4 was obviously the source of my motor issues. Had I not bought the supercharger the problem with this cylinder would have quickly become evident when I went to look at the plugs. It looks as new as when I installed it. I dont think it has fired once. Since there are two plugs and two plug wires, I have to assume this cylinder probaby saw no fuel. Bad injector?

-One of the exhaust studs was not seated deeply enough, which made removal of one of the round hex nuts irritating. (couldn't seat the allen key deep enough because the stud was near the top of the nut) As a reminder to myself and anyone else, make sure your exhaust studs are fully seated in the engine case.

-The freshly powder coated parts are already showing signs of rust coming through the power coating. This is particularly dissapointing to me. (on engine bracket and engine tin)

Tomorrow I will probe further into the motor. Hopefully I won't find any damage related to #4 cylinder not firing, or running without fuel.

---------------
Next steps
---------------
I have to send the pistons out for machining to 9:1 compression and have the a/c bracket and the motor bracket strengthened.
So after this initial dissassembly there will be a delay while that gets completed and all of the porsche parts get ordered.

Luckily the canadian dollar is almost on par with the US dollar (.96) so its a great time to be buying service and parts out of the USA.

Pictures
------------
Note the 4/5/6 cylinder bank picture. #4 is clean as a whistle. This is an air cooled porsche motor. It should look sooty.

Also the spark plug is #4 primary plug. It has obviously never fired. (Or never had any gas to fire)

Kirk
p.s. Please feel free to comment, add advice, etc in this thread.
p.p.s. Maybe Wayne is going to give me a frequent flyer discount for ripping this thing apart again in less than 12 months?

kirkf · 07-24-2007, 10:02 PM

alpina · alpina's Garage

bookmarked

kirkf · 07-26-2007, 11:41 PM

Ok I got a little more done tonight. I stripped the motor down to the bare block. Tomorrow I will have the pistons out.

It kinda hurt my feelings taking it apart...

It would have been nice to just fix the problem with cylinder #4 and see how it ran afterwards. Oh well.

Looking at the engine carrier I cant believe how weak looking it is.

I didnt notice any other issues with my rebuild during the disassembly. Metal pieces that were powder coated are showing some rust coming through. Anything alloy that was powder coated looks fine.

I'm anxious to see the internals to #4 cylinder. I hope nothing was damaged in there.

Kirk

kirkf · 07-27-2007, 09:59 PM

I completed the disassembly tonight.

I removed all of the heads and cam tower as a single piece as Axl suggested. It worked out quite well, except it was a bit difficult seperating the heads from the cylinders. The cylinders wanted to come off with the heads.

Some of the pictures of cylinder 4 are amazing. You would swear the motor had never been started. The intake side was marked with INT in marker. Its still clearly visible. The valves look as if they have never been used.

My only explanation for this is a total lack of fuel in this cylinder. The injector must have been completely dead, but I would love some other expert opinions on this.

-I feel that with 2 plugs / 2 plug wires to that cylinder its unlikely to have been a spark issue.
-Also unburnt fuel should have washed off marker
-There wasnt a problem with detonation on that cylinder
-So either its the injector or the wiring harness thats at fault. ?

Luckily it doesnt look like anything involving that cylinder suffered any damage.

Kirk
p.s. since the wife was in the garage trying to figure out why the hell I was ripping my motor to pieces 'again' you get to see a mug shot of me.

kirkf · 07-27-2007, 10:09 PM

Next I wrapped up the motor for storage until all the parts arrive for reassembly.

You guys are going to laugh at me but I had a roll of packing 'saran wrap', so I rolled it over the engine to seal it all up, and then I put an orange garbage bag over everything.

It should be good to keep the dust out.

Kirk

[img]http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads11/2007_0727_222359+Medium+1185602931.jpg
[/img]

kirkf · 10-20-2007, 07:43 PM

I received the parts back from SoK
They machined the pistons down to 9:1 compression, strengthened the welds on the aluminum A/C bracket, and added an extra steel plate to the engine carrier to make it stronger.

In the picture of the A/C bracket you can see how they welded a new seam along the inside edges.

For the engine carrrier they welded an full insert plate into the top half. You can see where they spot welded it along the outside edges.

For the pistons they took material off the top crown. I tried to take some shots that showed how much was removed. In these pictures you can see an original piston and the machined one.

Kirk

mdmiller911 · 10-23-2007, 12:58 PM

Is Superchargers of Knoxville still around??? About a month ago, I was interested in buying an 86 widebody with its 3.2 supercharged with a paxton. It was in the knoxville area so I tried to get a phone number or website for SoK for some research but couldn't find one. Do you have a number?

Jeff Alton · 10-23-2007, 08:19 PM

Yes. I thought they were history too! What is the story??

Cheers

BlueSideUp · 10-23-2007, 10:19 PM

Great information here!

I usually overnight in Winnipeg once every couple months.....

I thought the only thing happening in YWG was at Earl's!

kirkf · 10-24-2007, 07:37 PM

Mike Parker from SoK told me they have largely folded up their operations, but they agreed to do this small job for me.
If you want their contact info let me know and I will dig it out of my old emails again.

As for WPG you are right about it being pretty quiet when it comes to Porsche stuff. But the beer is always good.

Kirk

Jeff Alton · 10-24-2007, 08:15 PM

I have some folks from my latest project flying into WPG thursday afternoon and then out again on Sunday morning. If I did not have to fly out monday for Nor Cal I would be joining them....

What is the weather like?

Cheers

kirkf · 10-26-2007, 06:21 PM

Sadly I am working in saskatoon for the next two weeks, so I dont even know how the weather is. Thats one of the reasons all my projects proceed so slowly. I almost always work out of town.
(I work for an engineering firm doing controls and automation, and spend most of my time on industrial sites)

Kirk

kirkf · 05:43 PM

(From March 26th)

Well after calculating the compression ratio, it turns out that SoK blew the machining of these pistons by a mile.
They come in at about 10.4:1 instead of the 9:1 they were intended to be.

After looking at the various options of removing the expensive coating and remachining, etc. I just gave up and ordered new pistons from EBSRacing.

They should arrive in about 5 weeks.

Sigh.

Kirk

COMPRESSION RATIO = (V1 + V2 + V3 - V4) / (V2+V3 - V4)
WHERE:
V1 = SWEPT VOLUME
V2 = DECK HEIGHT VOLUME
V3 = CYLINDER HEAD VOLUME
V4 = DOME VOLUME

3.6 L
BORE = 100mm
STROKE = 76.4 mm

CYLINDER VOLUME = PI/4 * BORE² * STROKE
CYLINDER VOLUME = 0.7853982 * BORE² * STROKE

V1 = SWEPT VOLUME
V1 = BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * 7.64cm * 0.7854
= 600.05 cc

V2 = DECK HEIGHT VOLUME
V2 = BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * .095cm * 0.7854
= 7.46 cc
(.95 mm DECK HEIGHT MEASURED DURING REBUILD LAST YEAR USING CRUSHED SOLDER METHOD)

V3 = CYLINDER HEAD VOLUME
V3 = 89.57 CC (MEASURED WITH BURETTE)

V4 = DOME VOLUME
WITH PISTON 1cm BELOW DECK, THEORETICAL VOLUME (WITHOUT DOME) WOULD BE:
= BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * 1cm * 0.7854
= 78.54 cc
MEASURED VOLUME USING BURETTE = 44.4 CC
DOME VOLUME = THEORETICAL VOLUME - MEASURED VOLUME
= 78.54CC - 44.4CC
= 34.14 CC

COMPRESSION RATIO = (V1 + V2 + V3 - V4) / (V2+V3 - V4)
= (600.05 + 7.46 + 89.57 - 34.14) / (7.46 + 89.57 - 34.14)
= 662.94 / 62.89
= 10.54:1

kirkf · 05-07-2008, 05:42 PM

SoK was also nice enough to beef up my engine support bracket and re powder coat it. but they didnt drill the holes for the supercharger mounting bracket. So what would have been a template job for them will now be a project in itself for me as I figure out where they expected the SC to be mounted for everything to line up properly.

Kirk

kirkf · 05-07-2008, 05:46 PM

And here we are about 6 weeks later.
Voila, new custom machined JE pistons.

Sadly all I can think of is Jeff sticking that screwdriver through his hand while trying to put the retaining clips on his JE pistons!

Hopefully it goes smoother for me!

I'll check the actual compression ratio on these tomorrow to see where they ended up. I ordered 8.9:1

Kirk

Jeff Alton · 05-07-2008, 08:56 PM

Check that thread where some of us made tools to install the clips.....

Glad you got sorted on this, hopefully she is up and running well soon!

911pcars · 05-08-2008, 10:46 AM

I suspect the compression ratio increase resulted via the shaved cylinder heads rather than by your shaved pistons which would normally decrease the CR. If you specified 8.9:1 CR pistons based on the stock factory specs, you might still end up with a higher-than-desired CR.

For boosted applications, I'd think you'd want a lower CR to begin with unless you're planning a low-boost engine. Even then, I'd suggest some detonation-mitigation, instrumentation components such as an intercooler, knock sensor, CHT sensors and/or water injection.

Sherwood

kirkf · 05-08-2008, 12:28 PM

I went out and measured the new JE pistons today.

JE Piston Compression Ratio
Expected is 8.9:1 with a 1.0 mm deck height

COMPRESSION RATIO = (V1 + V2 + V3 - V4) / (V2+V3 - V4)
WHERE:
V1 = SWEPT VOLUME
V2 = DECK HEIGHT VOLUME
V3 = CYLINDER HEAD VOLUME
V4 = DOME VOLUME

3.6 L
BORE = 100mm
STROKE = 76.4 mm

CYLINDER VOLUME = PI/4 * BORE² * STROKE
CYLINDER VOLUME = 0.7853982 * BORE² * STROKE

V1 = SWEPT VOLUME
V1 = BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * 7.64cm * 0.7854
= 600.05 cc

V2 = DECK HEIGHT VOLUME
V2 = BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * .1cm * 0.7854
= 7.46 cc
(1 mm DECK HEIGHT ASSUMED, BUT NOT YET CHECKED)

V3 = CYLINDER HEAD VOLUME
V3 = 89.57 CC (MEASURED WITH BURETTE)

V4 = DOME VOLUME
WITH PISTON .8915 cm BELOW DECK, THEORETICAL VOLUME (WITHOUT DOME) WOULD BE:
= BORE² * STROKE * 0.7854
= 10cm² * .8915cm * 0.7854
= 70.02 cc
MEASURED VOLUME USING BURETTE = 48.3 CC
DOME VOLUME = THEORETICAL VOLUME - MEASURED VOLUME
= 70.02CC - 48.3CC
= 21.72 CC

COMPRESSION RATIO = (V1 + V2 + V3 - V4) / (V2+V3 - V4)
= (600.05 + 7.85 + 89.57 - 21.7) / (7.85 + 89.57 - 21.7)
= 675.75 / 75.70
= 8.93:1

This looks dead on. To seal the rings I have to use grease around the edge of the cylinder, and there is a small possibility for error at the hole in the plastic plate I use.

I should now be able to start reassembling the motor.

Kirk

kirkf · 05-08-2008, 12:37 PM

Sherwood,

I checked a set of stock pistons compared to the ones SoK machined for me. The stock piston came in at 10.7:1, and the machined piston from SoK came in at 10.4:1, so they didnt remove anywhere near enough piston dome, even if there was some discrepencies between theoretical and real world values.

The setup I am trying to install is a used SoK setup. So I am trying to stay as close to their design specs as possible. Which call for 8.8:1 to 9.5:1 compression. There is indeed a large intercooler to go with the setup.

Kirk