2000 Special Edition #2441

[lifebyevan]

April 24th, 2020

Now that all the paperwork for the car has been sorted, I can work on the car and record all the progress that is made easily by adding to the timeline of service history with my own write ups.

I had a few days to work on the car at this point thankfully. First order of business is to track down why this supercharger has so much lag. I am after that instant response everyone talks about, not a T-5 second rocket launch countdown to when the power kicks in. Here is my untouched (by me) engine bay and what I was working with.





I started off easy with the spark plugs, mainly because I did not know the last time they were changed. I chose to go with the NGK V-POWER ZFR6F-11 plugs because from my research these plugs should be fine for stock boost levels with the JRSC. If I notice any spark related issues I’ll step up to the NGK IRIDIUM BKR7EIX-11, but I doubt I will need to.

Next on my list was this hideous wiring to a sensor in the dummy throttle body. I was not completely sure what this sensor was for based on what I read in the JRSC installation instructions that I had, but I figured it would be easy to fix and clean up. I chopped off the old connection that was some mixture of a female blade connector. I added a small piece of wire to extend the wire to its original length, crimped on a fresh terminal, added solder to the connection for reliability, and finished it off with some heat shrink. I covered all the new connections in some fresh loom wrap and connected it to the sensor.





No noticeable difference with the supercharger lag yet. So next I decided to check for potential vacuum/boost leaks. All the clamps for the couplers for the supercharger seem to be on nice and tight, no problems there. Next, I volunteered a friend to act as my supercharger so I could quickly check for any major boost leaks on the intake manifold side of things. The easiest way to do this was to find some extra vacuum line, plug it up to one of the unused vacuum ports and have him blow as hard as he can for about 30 seconds, while I spray soapy water on all the vacuum connections. The line running from my cruise control actuator to a t-fitting by the manifold was the only visible minor leak that could be found. This would make sense because my cruise control doesn’t work. Since I did not have the correct length of vacuum line on hand, I just capped off that end of the t-fitting and secured it in place with a zip tie so I could continue diagnosing.

No change in supercharger response. Now I knew I had to do a bit more learning on my supercharger and how the system operates to find the problem. Most posts I found online suggested something to do with the bypass actuator possibly being the culprit of supercharger lag. I also learned that while idling your arm should be in one position, and when blipping the throttle the arm should move downward without much resistance to allow for the supercharger to work properly. In my case, when blipping the throttle, the arm was not moving freely and it looked like it was sticking a bit.

Reading through the JRSC installation instructions (which is my best friend at this point), I found a section about needing to lubricate the bypass actuator arm.



My choice of grease in this case was a can of PB Blaster White Lithium Grease. With the aerosol straw, I sprayed around the area that the actuator arm went in and out of, drove the car around for a minute or two and repeated the process a couple of times. The lag felt like it was slightly improved upon but not by much. While inspecting the bypass valve, I noticed that the holes in the bracket holding the bypass valve seemed to have a bit of room for adjustment. I loosened the two bolts holding the bypass valve in place and tilted it back so when it pushed downward, it could do so from a better angle and maybe not bind.



Sure enough, that was the ticket. Now the supercharger responds nicely and builds boost right away almost every time. Here you can see how much better the bypass valve is working.