Here’s some easy to do it yourself tutorials to service the SC14 Blower. This will be updated from time to time and cover topics such as Changing the Oil, Swapping the SC14 Pulley and Fixing Blower that might have seized up out of the blue.
Last Updated: 10th October 2017
SC14 Tutorial 101: Pulley Removal & Swap
Removing & Swapping the Pulley on the SC14 Blower is a relatively easy process, You just require a c clip remover and some basic tools. Below is a quick guide I have put together. Here’s how to do it with some pictures.
Caution: Before starting know that I am a mere hobbyist, and I take no responsibility should anything go wrong including damage to yourself, the blower or others. Use this purely for educational purposes only.
Apply some PB Blaster or Penetrating Oil or even WD40 if you have nothing else, and leave it to soak in for a bit, this is going to make the rest of the process a lot smoother as over the years these metal parts can become a bit hard to remove.
Now using the right size wrench take off the front bolt off, It will be in there a bit tight, I have found box wrenches to work very well for this task, and a combination of a sharp and quick bang or two from a mallet will loosen the nut in most instances.
In other cases, if it still won’t come off, then hold the cross face or lock it in place, use one of the 4 squares, either a pipe wrench or some vice grips will do, some people jam some the rotors with some thick wiping towels to prevent it from moving really, be careful not to cut your fingers.
Once the bolt is off, slide the cross face straight out forward or upwards, Do not jiggle it, it should slide straight out, you will notice from the pictures the cross face sits on some groves and can only move front and back.
Once the Cross Face is off, you will find the pulley held in by a large nut with 4 tabs, simply put a flat head screw driver against one of the four tabs position anti-clockwise, then bang with a mallet and the nut will slowly undo itself.
Now you can take out the Pulley itself and you will be left with the magnet, To Remove the Magnet you will notice a C Clip inside holding it in place, simply use your C Clip Remover to hold and remove the C Clip.
And there you have it, Total Removal process of the SC14 Pulley.
SC14 Tutorial 102: Fixed SC14 Pulley – Run Constantly
First of all, the magnet is what makes the original SC14 Mad Max Style On/Off clutch feature work, just like an Aircon. 😉 Now usually smaller pulleys won’t allow the use of the clutch feature due to being limited by space and thus smaller magnets lacking the power “grunt”per say to spin the blower at those speeds without slippage. That said some people have reportedly used up to 93mm pulleys from the Toyota Corolla Aircon Unit, and retained the clutch feature using a 12V to 24V stepper.
So you will only be doing this if you got a smaller pulley, and therefore if you are going to put on a smaller pulley, please test mock things, often people use alternator pulleys with the right bearing inside, however always mind the distance and spacing compared where the ribs sit, the rear/last rib should always be at the same distance as the original pulley sat at, and for that on most 6 ribbed pulley’s vs the original, you usually need to put about 5mm spacing in between the pulley and cross face itself or the belt alignment will be thrown off and you will be chewing through belts.
The Cross face can be bolted or spot welded to the pulley to make it run constantly, just as long as you mind the spacing discussed earlier. Simply slot it onto the groves to make sure its mounted right, then you can decide where you want to mark to drill, a die and tap set also helps. Another You can also drill the rivets on the cross face and take out the small metallic cross piece with the grooved shaft by drilling the 4 rivets out of the cross face.
In the pictures above, only the left one is relevant, it shows the metallic cross piece with the center groves that slot on and slide into the groves and slots on the blowers rotor shaft, this piece is originally held inside the stock large pulley the SC14 comes with, and can be taken out by drilling out the four rivets that hold it in place to the front of the pulley, and can be reversed by simply bolting it if needed. This allows easy swap of pulleys using this same main center piece.
The other two pictures on the right show what I had to do when I had broken the stud on the rotor shaft that held the cross face in place by taking in the nut we removed earlier to remove the pulley assembly. Since I only broke this part on one of my test blowers, I simply drilled and tapped a hole in the middle to screw in a bolt. So it does the same thing. Holding the pulley in place after its slotted in the groves. Others working on these blowers have no need to do this, since they will have a nice stud there like the earlier pictures that accepts the nut removed. However in case you do ever break the stud, this is a viable solution to get an otherwise good blower running again. Apart from that the rest of the principle remains the same,
SC14 Tutorial 103: Straight Swap Toyota 93mm Pulley for SC14
The most commonly used pulley good for around 5-6PSI is the air con pulley found on the early 2000’s Toyota Corolla.
This is a direct swap pulley that works on the Yellow Dipstick Cross-face SC14, the bearing is of the same Diameter as the SC14 Sleeve, it may not work on the other type of SC14 that has a different diameter sleeve.
It’s a pulley from the Denso SCS A06C air con unit, Made in Japan. Often sold on ebay as “Toyota Corolla 2004 Petrol Air Con Pump” with these Part Numbers 4472206364 4471001950 883101A580 389. Keep in Mind a shorter belt will be required for this pulley, and the correct correlating belt sizes are in the 30 Page Installations-Anleitungen.
SC14 Tutorial 104: Changing SC14 Oil
I have used Full Synthetic ATF / Automatic Transmission Fluid with great success, usually pretty cheap too. The best oil would be of course the Toyota SC14 oil, however it is quite expensive. Otherwise there is a variety of oils that are known to work with the SC14 supercharger in the long long term, such as Mobil 5W, Mobil 0W Fully Synthetic, Castrol R30, Kenne Bell Supercharger Oil, Holden and GM Supercharger Oils. Just take the bottom drain bolt of the blower and let the oil inside the chamber drain out for a bit, dont make an oil spill, once all done, wipe the bolt clean, its got a magnet on it to collect worn out metal bits from the gears inside, put the bolt back and tighten it well, but dont go too overboard. Now Refill the blower using a Syringe, multiple measure and fills maybe required however you only require about 160ml (max) of oil to do a total dry fill up.
SC14 Tutorial 105: An Seized or Stuck Supercharger
Some SC14’s may appear seized, this is due to a number of reasons during transport, dust or particles that may have fallen in and gotten stuck in, not having adequate lubrication oil in it, a few teeth on the gears being bad to downright being a case of bad bearings (rarely but possible) vice versa. Commonly if its not a bad bearing and the rotors are still good, you can “fix” it, easily by one making sure its got some oil inside, and two, by washing the blower with some soap and water.
To wash the blower and attempt to free it up, just use a garden hose on low settings and spray the blowers rotors to give the blower an overall good clean, make sure the oil chamber bolt/dipstick is closed snug, we dont want any water mixing with oil there. Now fill one side of the blower with some water, try to spin it back and forth, fill it again, and try again, it will give slowly, now that you got a hang of it, now put some dish washing soap inside, slowly spin the cross face back and forth. Use a common brush to clean it around a bit. Note, please do not use any corrosive chemicals, do not use any steel wool or metallic stuff that could scratch or scruff up the coated rotors, just use a soft plastic bristled glass and dish washing brush and regular dish washing soap, watch out from your hands getting cut from the sharp edges, and clean away. Once you feel its gotten a lot better, turn the other side up and fill the rotor packs again with water and try to spin it back and forth, doing this enough times with soap etc will slowly free up the clog, and make the blower spin free again. From here on, give it a decent clean, and let it dry naturally, And watch out from anything falling in. 😉