So my car has been making quite a racket coming from the nose of the car. I bring it to my local dealer and the SA listens and says its coming from the charger. Possibly a bad bearing or the gears in the back. But heres where it gets odd. He tells me theres a service bulletin for the gear failure. After many weeks of hearing this sound and trying to research and fearing the worse I've never once seen a mention of this service bulletin. Seen it for other things; clutch, power steering, etc. So the question is now, I've put a pulley on my car and with them saying its a service bulletin and the car still under warranty, is it covered?

 

I can't say for certain what will happen, but I can speculate!

I asked the lead tech at my mini dealer about the underdrive pulley and he said most people install them wrong and it causes problems. He said a new SC costs about $6300 and they are covered under the emissions warranty to 60 or 80k miles (and I think it's actually 100k per the owners manual) so he told me not to mess with it...

He said the problem is that people tend to install them on the shaft crooked, putting more strain on the parts causing failure.

Here's where things get crappy: Magnusson-Moss says the dealership has to show that your aftermarket parts caused the failure of the part to invalidate the warranty.

If your pulley wasn't installed completely flush/centered/square to the shaft, and it caused premature bearing wear, I could see them refusing to replace the part under the service bulletin/warranty.

Just my opinion. Good luck man!

 

Your dealer is telling you a bunch of BS. And saying "most" is a vast overstatement.....when it is done wrong (by maybe 1 in 10 of diy'er max), it whines and sequels, and the person installing it will need to get it fixed in a few miles.....
The seal fails on the lower SC power take-off....it is geared to send power to the water-pump.....it has nothing to do with alignment. If the pulley is installed wrong, the Snout of the SC and the bearings there should fail.
As for the $$....he is also way off...a SC is about $1500 from the dealer(reman)or like 600-800$ re-manufactured from a 3rd party... about a days labor istall....NOT $6800!!! That is like half a motor!! Be sure to do the waterpump at the same time if you do a SC.....and go to a different shop!! Your dealer is filled foolsssssss...............................

 

I was there for the pulley party. It was done by a seasoned club member. He's done like a dozen of them. The supercharger was making the noise prior to the install.

 

The supercharger is covered under the emissions warranty? Really? I never heard that before. That would be good news.

 

A few folks have made that argument....very few have won. Good luck if you try it. But to try it, you must be at the dealer...and if it is not covered 100%, the price will be much higher than if you have a mini centric shop do the SC swap. At the very least, you may loose use of your car for an extra few days while youbfight, and the dealer's sell remafactured SC for about 2x the cost of getting yours rebuilt....and with the dealers typical high labor rate.

 

There is no Supercharger bulletin that i have ever seen... $6300 for a Supercharger is pretty high