TRD/ Magnuson 4.0 Supercharger Tips, Tricks, and Mods

Since that header is shared by 2/4/6, did 6 take the brunt of the backflow because that’s the shortest run of the header?

Were your cats OEM Toyota? CARB approved aftermarket or other?

I took my truck to Moab this past week and had a good trip but I can’t (don’t want) to have any costly failures like these and continue to get more weary of having the truck. Coming up on 98k miles, the supercharger will probably need a rebuild (mileage based, not because it sounds bad).

 

I used their clearance specs. .25mm for intake and exhaust.

 

Only 98k? LMAO! I put my supercharger on at 150k. I now have 200k miles. I will assume so with the jba shorties. 6 has the shortest runner. Cats were factory.

 

Yeah.. supercharger was out on around 3,100 miles. Truck has almost 98k. I only drive it about 4k a year now that I have a “daily”, so if i wait until the mileages based 100k rebuild, it will still be a few years before the supercharger is due…

 

Stick with the periodic maintenance schedules and you don't really have much to worry about.

 

I have the engine torn down. Most of the parts look good. Surprising! I am finding sludgy cat material everywhere. It looks like a gray paste. the crank main and rod journals look fine and are in spec. The bearings show some signs of wear, but it mostly looks like the dry film lube coating wearing and not the bearing. Here are some pics, not all. No point on seeing repetitive pics. Lol!

Gray paste cat material on the crankshaft sensor


Oil pan and pickup, more gray paste.

More cakes up around the crank sensor

Cyl 6 bottom rod bearing. Looks good

Cyl 6 top half. Little more wear. Not bad. All the rods looked close to this.


Top half of the main bearings. Zoom in and you will see a little wear, but nothing major.

One of the pistons. Don't remember off hand.

I contemplating on reusing the bearings and the pistons. As long as the bock does not need to be bored out. Cyl 6 has no more cross hatching.


Cyl 6


Cyl 5 last cylinder on bank 1 for comparison. Here you can still see the cross hatching.
Well, I'm done for the night. I hope you enjoy or learn from my experiences.

 

Shoot dude. I got bad cats as well. I may need to really put it in high gear to replace them now because the last thing I need right now is to have to do an engine rebuild on this truck because of bunk cats.

I'm sorry to hear that happened to you bro. Ugh..

Looks like you were right on the money with your bet @IvanhoeTaco

 

Well, you guys got me thinking about how I havent a clue as to when I should replace my cats. Any best practice knowledge out there? Google just tells me when asked to replace them "hey man, like, when they go bad you know" which is ahhhh yeah.

Anyone who has done the fuel pump replacement, no downloadable directions on that - I would love to continue my crusade on replacing nearby hoses and whatnot when I am in the vicinity. To that end - anyone have a copy of the install manual? I would love to get ahold of that before those parts show in case I need to order anything else.

 

As rich as the trd tune is I would expect them not to last nearly as long as non supercharged application. No data to back that up but more fuel in the cat means hotter cats means less life

 

Just gut the things and render the cat 02 inert

 

@JustDSM and OTT can solve this.

 

Thought about both there. Only 130k miles on mine, but its an 09 so coming up on 16 years old. Driven mostly in a dry climate. Gotta be some sort of best practice on this thing. I guess I could hit it with hammers and see if it sounds like a drawer full of steak knives, but that seems like a bit of a self fulfilling situation.

 

Hitting it with a hammer could break or dislodge it. As well as thermal shock if it's lava hot and it gets wet.

Best insurance unfortunately is deleting them.

 

Thanks to @wrmathis, had my AFE Twisted Steel Headers with GESI high flow cats installed last weekend. Truck is just over 121K so this gives me some piece of mind for now. Time will tell how long they last though.

https://afepower.com/afe-power-48-46003-1hc-twisted-steel-header-409-stainless-steel-w-cat

 

I GONNA DO IT OKAY JEEZ GOSH.

No seriously I've been well advised to do the fuel pump and pulley first. I'm dying to get that tune, trust me. As much for the correction as it is for a final diagnostic check pass to make sure everything is dialed.

 

Just a heads up for my supercharged brethren. I have the pulley boys quick change pulley on my supercharger and need to remove it to rebuild supercharger. Unfortunately the quick change pulley hub has no room between it and the supercharger snout to use an actually pulley removal tool so going to try with my 3 jaw puller to remove possibly ruining the hub. This goes the same with the URD quick change pulley hub. Per Gadget his pulley hub is not meant to be removed so most likely if you try to remove it you will destroy it and need to buy a new one.

The pic on my supercharger shows the pulley boys hub, where as the hub of the URD one has the mounting arms so looks even harder to remove.

 

with your short bed, you’ll have to drop the tank to get to it. Those with a long bed can either drop the tank OR move the bed out of the way (55mm torx socket I believe for the bed bolts).

 

Ok guys, I know you're all worried about the cats. I do have the kelford supercharger cams, so that may have contributed to this due to the different cam profile. I can not confirm that at this time. But, thinking about it, this seems like the most logical.

 

This is why catalytic converters are never in the conversation when it comes to performance.

 

I just installed the 3 degree offset cams when I put on my SC as well.

Also I wasnt really serious about beating my cams with a hammer. Just shaking them a little to make sure they didn't sound like santa claus got me some small ball bearings for christmas this year, something something yeah.

Sounds like there arent any specifics for cat lifespan expectations. No service manual hey in 20 years chuck em. Or 10? I dunno by that point I'm sure the Toyota service manual is just mad you didnt purchase a new vehicle already.

So back to the supercharger fun - I have a 2.7 pulley on the way. I can go pulley wrap mod with the stock belt, or get a proper sized belt. Any compelling reason to go one way vs the other?