hello to all the fellow S owners.
I have a quick question that is bugging me. I do all my own service work (changing fluids, parts and so on). My question is, how often should the oil in the supercharger be replaced? BMW is vague, and the internet has conflicting information.

Any help at all would be aces! thanks

 

It was never designed to be changed. However, many are pulling it and doing it at least every 100K. I just had mine done and it still had oil in it. It was dirty, but at least there was oil.

 

many thanks. Mine has 101k. So im going to go ahead and change it. Just to be safe.

 

+1, basiclly it doesn't "need" to be changed, if you want to, 100k to 125k would be about right, that's right before the time people start to have issues with water pump gears due to seepage of the seals allowing oil into the S/C and the W/P gear housing to go dry, so just simply making sure it's full is actually more important than new fluid, in extending the life of the gears.

 

thanks, yeah i was going to *check* it first. if its good then i agree that it would be silly to change.

 

IMO, if you're going to the trouble of pulling the SC to check it, it would be silly *not* to change the oil. Not to mention checking the rear gears visually, which would require a change.

 

I did mine at 131k.

Mine had oil in it, but it took almost every drop of two 4 oz bottles of supercharger oil to get it running clear instead of honey-colored out of there.

A couple of pointers.

1) Be prepared to take two days to do it, if you don't want to rush.
2) You may as well buy supercharger oil two weeks before you want to do the job, it seems nobody stocks it locally. The GM supercharger oil is the stuff you'll want.
3) Be prepared to change your coolant (that's just good maintenance anyway) because you're going to disconnect hoses anyway to get the car into "service mode"
4) If you were thinking about a Supercharger pulley swap, buy the tensioner tool and possibly the Cravenspeed puller and do it while you're in there, no better time.
5) If you're doing all of that, buy a new JCW belt as well, get everything done in one shot.

After you bring the car into service mode, you'll likely never want to do it again.

 

As posted, at your mileage, change the water pump and pull apart the SC and clean up the gears. If you are going to do it, do it right.

 

If you do pull the sc to service the gears with 100k+, it might be worth doing the waterpump..99% of the labour is already done....just takes the part to know it is done...would suck to be thst deep in the car, and not spend the $100 on a new one...the have the seals start to weep even 20k later....a water pump rarely lasts for life..it is a wear item....so swap it and be done with it.
I guess this logic could be taken to the extreme, but lets face it, 100k is more than most folks expected to get out of a car a few decades ago. If you spend your time on labour, spend a couple $$ to freshen up items that are "spent".
If you do go with a pulley, the jcw belt is actually too long for a 15 or 17% pulley....it is what folks used before users found non oem belt.

 

oh no doubt. After further research, i did find out about the water pump. Oh man i can see now why no one wants to get in there and change it. It would be a nightmare and not to mention $$$$$$

 

<---- this is me deciding if im going to go this far into it. But yeah, if i do go for it. Might as well do it right.

 

Agreed! would be silly not too.

 

thanks for the info. Will help me make the check list of parts needed.