My brother is driving the blue devil right now in Wichita and called me a little while ago to tell me he got a low coolant light. Then he apparently heard all kinds of noise from the engine so he pulled into a mall parking lot. He then took the photos attached.

At first I thought maybe some kind of water pump failure because there's coolant spewing all over the place, but then I realized the coolant pump is further down. So after looking at a diagram of the front of the engine and a coolant line that runs directly underneath the "Electromagnetic Clutch", I assume this line got severed by chards of metal flying around. Then I did a quick search and found that some clutch bearing tends to fail, and I assume this is it.

I assume this will require replacement of the Supercharger unit itself?

Oh yea... 46k miles.

Thanks.

 

So sorry---Let us know what the repair is. Maybe it will just be the bearing and coolant lines.

 

Thanks, we will see. I was planning on getting rid of the car soon and it has an extended warranty on it, so I guess whoever ends up owning it is going to get at least a new S/C clutch bearing.

 

Wow a lot of schrapnal (spelling?) may only be a belt failure they can tear up a lot of stuff sometimes under the right conditions but from the pics it does look serious good luck ,,,I hope it turns out to be minimal ....... and if you need a replacement cover later I have one I will let you have very cheap to ease some of the pain ,,, ,,,, Again GOOD LUCK,,,

Howard.

 

Thanks Howard!

Nah, belt is in tact. There is an actual piece of metal (says my brother) that you can move back and forth with your hand almost sticking up out of that newly created orifice. The car starts and runs (I had him try it for a couple of moments) and that piece of metal spins round and round (and makes all the noise). So it is pretty seriously fubar'ed in there.

 

need pics of the belt and s/c bearing area to kno for sure

 

I'm in Saint Louis and it's going to be dark soon where he is so that will be unlikely. It will be towed to Davis-Moore Chrysler in the morning from the mall parking lot.

 

I agree on the pics krazy ,,,actual pully bearing failure maybe ?? pully blowing apart ,,, guessing on my part,, First time I recall hearing of this problem

 

I will let you guys know what the dealer finds out once I have the run down.

 

Looks and sounds like an idler pulley failure.

 

thats what im thinking brian. location would be right. simple fix . even if its a s/c bearing the dealer will want to replace the whole s/c unit!! 7000k! bearing 25$

 

So, I'm looking at the following diagram from MBWorld, and it looks to me like the location of the damage is right in line with the "electromagnetic clutch" for the S/C. Keep in mind, the belt is still in tact and on the pulleys according to my brother. He kept saying that the part that broke is "behind a pulley". This leads me to believe it is NOT the idler. Also, he never had a loss of power steering control, A/C, or any other warning lights except the light that illuminated for the loss of coolant.

 

After autocross racing (Dec 08) when my supercharger died the sc pully fried and melted the cover exactly like yours. The SC disintegrated upon excessive overheating. The car still drove fine, but had no power. The SC was relaced 18 months ago under warranty.

I bought a spare on ebay a year ago just in case.

 

Thanks RMADERMAN, good info.

 

To me it looks like the friction disc fragged and flew out in pieces. The metal piece in the pic looks like one of the flexable straps that rivet to it.

 

Sorry for the trouble, hope it works out with the warranty. I bought a warranty and it has been ok so far.

 

OUCH!
Thanks alot,
It's not like we don't have enough concerns with with these modified SRT's, now I can look forward to shrapnell possibly flying through my hood?
Hope it's a easy fix for you,
Good luck and please keep us posted.
Mike

 

Thanks, I'll keep everyone posted once I know the exact diagnosis. They'll look at the car sometime tomorrow hopefully.

 

wichita kansas? ....I used to live just south of there and davis moore was the only place that would ever look at my x-fire, they took care of me the one time i used them.

 

Yep... Wichita, KS. Boy am I glad you chimed into this thread because I was beginning to wonder which of the three Chrysler dealers I should have told him to send it to. I figured Davis-Moore was probably the best of the three between Parks, Steven and Davis-Moore in that area.

Now for the somewhat worrisome part... According to Davis-Moore's brief diagnosis period today the failure was definitely in the "magnetic clutch". However they are running into trouble because while they DO supposedly have a XFire tech, his diagrams are not "matching up" in the service writer's words, with what he's actually seeing in the car. This leads me to believe they probably got their initial round of training and materials for the original XFire in 2003 or 2004, and probably never received updated training for the SRT6.

So as a result their XFire tech is supposedly conferring with another tech in Denver and they've ordered some initial parts to see if they can get things working without replacing the S/C I assume.

We'll see how it goes from here.