Questions and Answers

Supercharger-less Pontiac Q. Dear Vince: I'm new to your site, so I'm not sure if you answer the posted forum questions (in addition to other people’s responses), or if I should e-mail my question directly to you, so I'm both posting and e-mailing.

I have a 1996 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi 3.8L with Supercharger. It has given me a terrific 230,000 miles, but now the bearings are blown on the supercharger (pun intended). I want to let me daughter take this car to college, and have removed the supercharger belt. But I'm not sure what the air flow from the intake plenum, through the supercharger and into the intake manifold may do without the supercharger spinning.

Will the air cause the components to spin anyway, eventually dropping metal into the engine? Does it restrict airflow so badly that it will cause other serious problems? Or can I just let her drive it without worrying about the inoperative supercharger? She certainly doesn't need the extra power (her dad speaking)! If there might be too much restriction or possible metal contamination, is it fairly easy to remove the "guts" of the supercharger?

If you know where I can get technical diagrams that might answer these questions for me, that would be fine. I am reluctant to start buying repair manuals, because I have no intention of replacing the $2300 supercharger replacement part; and the manuals don’t tell you how to by-pass non-functioning components.

I used to be an auto mechanic (25 years ago), but never had any experience with superchargers. The main thing here is I just want to keep the car running cheaply and don’t care about the power of the supercharger. The engine is still in excellent shape, burning less than ½ quart oil between oil changes.

Thank you,
Marc

A. I, personally, answer questions here although I do answer some in my Forum. There are quite a few professional Technicians and Specialists that do an excellent job of answering questions there. That leaves me free to answer some of the hundreds of questions I get by mail.

Anyway, I guess it depends on what happened to the supercharger to make it go bad. If the bearings are seized, then air would go through it with out spinning the impeller. If the came apart, then maybe the impeller would still spin and the engine could suck in pieces of bearing. At the very least it would restrict the air flow through the engine.

I never had one apart (ruins the core value) so I don't really know what they look like inside. I don't know if they can be gutted and still be useable. You might want to go to a Pontiac Dealer and see what the parts would cost to replace the supercharger with a standard air intake.

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