When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Searched the forums and couldn't find an answer to some questions I have about the superchargers installed in the early R53/R52 MCS cars. Specifically, there are two different part numbers specified for my 2003 R53 MCS supercharger and I am not sure if they are interchangeable. The first is 11657526657 and is the 'normal' supercharger from 6/2004. The second is 11657556981 and is listed as the JCW supercharger from 10/2005. This second part number is also specified as the correct part for all R53 MCS superchargers from 2005 through end of production.
The reasons this is important are twofold. First, I need to replace my supercharger because upon opening it up to complete service on it, it was discovered to be beyond service from poor maintenance by the PO. Basically, it's shot. Second, the price difference of these two part numbers is SIGNIFICANT and I would prefer to buy the less expensive of the two if they are totally compatible with each other.
So the big question is whether all MCS superchargers are essentially the same and if something from a 2007 (for example) will fit and operate correctly in my 2003 and visa versa. Thanks for any clarity you all can provide!!!
Last edited by mainelymini; Aug 6, 2020 at 03:37 PM.
2002 through 2006 should fit just fine. The only difference that I remember being is that in 2005? a coating was added to the "blades" of the charger. Ive run both in mine, no issues at all, and they look identical when next to each other minus the coating. 2007 wont work, they are turbo 😜
2002 through 2006 should fit just fine. The only difference that I remember being is that in 2005? a coating was added to the "blades" of the charger. Ive run both in mine, no issues at all, and they look identical when next to each other minus the coating. 2007 wont work, they are turbo 😜
Nik
Thanks Nik!
By 2007, I meant R52 cabrio model MCS. No plans to retrofit the turbo, this project has already cost me enough time and money!!!
The 4th Gen Eaton M45 supercharger was used in R53 models built through June 2004. The 5th Gen (with a different rotor covering) Eaton M45 supercharger was used in Cooper S models built July 2004 onward and all JCW Tuning Kits. Those in the JCW Tuning Kits had a 11% reduction pulley.
The 5th Gen supercharger can be fitted on any year R53 or R52 Cooper S.
I doubt anyone has a new 4th Gen M45 sitting on shelf.
The 4th Gen Eaton M45 supercharger was used in R53 models built through June 2004. The 5th Gen (with a different rotor covering) Eaton M45 supercharger was used in R53 S models built July 2004 onward and all JCW Tuning Kits. Those in the JCW Tuning Kits had a 11% reduction pulley.
The 5th Gen supercharger can be fitted on any year R53 or R52 Cooper S.
I doubt anyone has a new 4th Gen M45 sitting on shelf.
Thanks Miniac,
Your information is a more clear version of what I was getting from other research. Based on what you wrote, and because I am replacing the OE pulley with a 17% pulley regardless, I might as well get the newest supercharger unit available if it fits my car.
So others also know, the cost of the new-spec unit direct from BMW is less than a rebuild of an old one so... no brainer!
Probably not worth going with a 4th gen since the 5th gen has the coated rotors. JCW superchargers had coated rotors from the beginning so there shouldn’t be an issue with compatibility. The only difference after the face lift was the 11% pulley or not.
If you decide to go with a JCW supercharger and want to upgrade the pulley, use the JCW pulley remover. The regular S remover doesn’t work and it’s not worth the risk of damaging the supercharger by cutting it off. A JCW puller should be available from Way Motor Works.
Okay here are the facts:
All the superchargers can be interchanged, no worries only pulley size will effect which belt you use.
02-04 Cooper S had a light grey coating on the rotors
05-06 Cooper S had a dark grey almost black coating, and 05-08 cabrio S
ALL the JCW superchargers 02-06 had the dark grey coating no matter dealer installed or factory.
Eaton said the dark grey is a touch more efficient, but we are splitting hairs on the actual performance difference. So I put no weight on which one to use as 99% of people would never be able to tell the difference.
Eaton says both coatings are ceramic, but the dark has more texture and may be why it actually produces that hair more.
MINI has discontinued many of the old part numbers and they supersede to new numbers and they are now stupid expensive.
But I actually had a hoard of a few in my warehouse of brand new JCW ones that are avail but limited as when they are gone they are gone and a rebuild will be the only affordable option. https://www.waymotorworks.com/john-c...ercharger.html
I rebuilt the snout in my garage, can also replace the rear WP gears pretty dang easy. and it's cheap for bearings/seals
the rotor park, that part is not easy, it's not a DIY no way to align the rotors to the gears so it depends on what has gone wrong with your SC, you need a press and some basic tools to work on them
may be a dumb question but I had a thunderbird sc and a good upgrade was to swap out the rotorpack for one from a later model grand prix gtp for better rotors.
with our sc the pre coated ones, are there any mods like that?
can the older sc's have the new coated rotors installed in them if rotors are avaliable to be bought , just the rotorpack.
I rebuilt the snout in my garage, can also replace the rear WP gears pretty dang easy. and it's cheap for bearings/seals
the rotor park, that part is not easy, it's not a DIY no way to align the rotors to the gears so it depends on what has gone wrong with your SC, you need a press and some basic tools to work on them
I was originally planning to rebuild/service the OE unit. When I opened it up, the edges of the rotor paddles were all significantly scored indicating bigger issues. Your point is well taken that if you have to remove the drive gears then you cannot rebuild it in your garage because of the rotor synch-alignment issue and that was my situation. The downstream horn was internally coated with oil and less than a teaspoon of oil was left in the PTO end of the unit; the seals were basically gone. We surmised that the oil seals had failed thereby allowing the oil to escape which accelerated wear on the bearings/shafts which created excessive play between the rotors so they started moving around way too much inside of their bores which permitted the paddles to rub on the inside of the supercharger housing and each other, too. Essentially, it was beyond basic service and needed a full rebuild which requires specialized tools and processes. There was also the probability that the inside of the housing had been damaged by the rotor paddles which would result in a rebuild not actually restoring full compression. Ironically, the snout end was in great condition with no oil leaks and no excessive play. I have a garage, not a machine shop, so I started looking around online and the cheapest rebuild service I found was almost $1000 including shipping to and from (and there is a distinct and expensive difference between "servicing" and "rebuilding" one of these things). I also looked around for used and new M45 units. There are, of course, TONS of used ones online but they will almost all need a service or rebuild and buying someone else's problems seemed like a bad choice. I settled on a brand new, latest spec M45 unit through BMW Parts Hub for $918 + core + shipping.
If the car's PO had cared to service the unit 30k miles ago, it would probably have been fine. If the PO had bothered to replace the intake hose (which had several gaping cracks in it when I bought the car) it would probably have lasted longer. Lord knows how much particulate matter made it into the intake tract through those cracks! For the price of a new unit, it made sense to me to eliminate the problems/potential problems altogether and ship the issues off to BMW's rebuild shop in exchange for having the latest and greatest M45 under the hood, especially with so much other tuning being done to the car that will stress the supercharger.
I have included some photos that I took yesterday when the new M45 arrived. As was pointed out by another post, the housings are 100% identical between the original unit that was probably built back in 2002 prior to being installed in the car on Mini's production line and the new one that was probably built within the last couple of years. The coating on the new rotors is similar to fine grit sandpaper which I presume is to help 'grip' the air coming in and increase the effectiveness of the rotor design. I was most amused by the color difference: the new one is silver outside and dark gray on the inside while the old one is silver inside and dark on the outside. Made me smile. I had to get the special JCW-only pulley puller from WMW to remove the 11% JCW pulley that came on it but with the correct puller it came off smoothly with no issues. (By the way, I now have a JCW 11% pulley and JCW pulley puller for sale that are going on eBay soon unless someone here wants them, PM me for prices if you're interested in either of them! I have read that it's straightforward to press the old pulley onto the shaft with the correct press...)
So the new supercharger was dropped off to my mechanic yesterday and hopefully the car will be back together and returned to me by week's end. I'm pretty excited to get it back and drive it around this weekend. I am grateful for the info from everyone and I am happy to share my experience with everyone through this process. Cheers!
Last edited by mainelymini; Aug 13, 2020 at 07:56 AM.
the water pump gears are easily removed and serviced
it's the rotor pack itself that cannot be disassembled, the two large equal size gears that are under the snout, it comes out of the housing as a pair you can remove it from the housing after pressing the water pump gear off
the 4th gen eaton m45 supercharger was used in r53 models built through june 2004. The 5th gen (with a different rotor covering) eaton m45 supercharger was used in cooper s models built july 2004 onward and all jcw tuning kits. Those in the jcw tuning kits had a 11% reduction pulley.
The 5th gen supercharger can be fitted on any year r53 or r52 cooper s.
I doubt anyone has a new 4th gen m45 sitting on shelf.
I took a gamble for $600 shipped-from-England on what to me looked like an extremely low mileage unit. It was being sold as an unused JCW s/c in original box and was listed for a fairly reasonable buy-it-now price considering what they sell for new nowadays. I noticed that the box part number didn't match up with the s/c sticker part number and sent the seller a message --- was inspired with confidence further when after getting my message the seller did proper research to discover the JCW pully was 58.2mm and the one he was selling had 65mm thus just a regular S unit. He revised the listing and dropped the price after that, talk about honest integrity!
The seller knew no history of it outside of finding it on a shelf in his late fathers garage. It was my gut feeling that it had been removed in lieu of a JCW kit back when the dealer would swap the whole s/c instead of simply changing pulleys, and then after install the original was put in a box to go on the shelf as a spare.
Part number on the box got superseded in late 2005, so I suspect this unit to be from 2003-2005???
Yes, lots of speculation on my part, but after initial physical in-the-flesh inspection I am extremely happy as it seems very fresh indeed.
What a great find! From the coated rotors and stock size pulley it’s a face lift S charger, and according to the sticker its 18th birthday is on Wednesday.
I never understood the hype over the costed rotors either..
even Eaton said that the coating provides NO noticeable change in boost or iat's..
Imo the Teflon facelift superchargers , atleast 90% of them ive seen have had massive flaking of their rotors and i cant imagine what could happen if a nice sized piece came off and wedged between a valve or gets into the combustion chamber. Because when it flakes , it has to go somewhere.
and the stock sc , if you have it off..
PORT the end of it.. there's SOOOOOOO much extra volume to be opened up and it along with porting of other intake components like manifold and sc horns , it makes a HUGE difference in airflow ability and power gains , exp when running a reduction pulley. You can then SAFELY run a 19% pulley too and even the stock ic handles iat's juuuuuuuust fine.
it's amazing all that can be ported.. aaaaaaaand our intakes suffer from cylinder #2 lean conditions so porting and correcting the airpaths can fix that too.
just look at all that can be ported in this stuff I've ported.. I'm running full ported setup , all my personal freinds are also and imo , $ for $ , other than a pulley reduction. It's one of the best upgrades I've done. Going from oem to the ported setup was night and day difference and the car after makes max boost so easy and throttle response is sooooo crisp too.
I never understood the hype over the costed rotors either..
even Eaton said that the coating provides NO noticeable change in boost or iat's..
Imo the Teflon facelift superchargers , atleast 90% of them ive seen have had massive flaking of their rotors and i cant imagine what could happen if a nice sized piece came off and wedged between a valve or gets into the combustion chamber. Because when it flakes , it has to go somewhere.
and the stock sc , if you have it off..
PORT the end of it.. there's SOOOOOOO much extra volume to be opened up and it along with porting of other intake components like manifold and sc horns , it makes a HUGE difference in airflow ability and power gains , exp when running a reduction pulley. You can then SAFELY run a 19% pulley too and even the stock ic handles iat's juuuuuuuust fine.
it's amazing all that can be ported.. aaaaaaaand our intakes suffer from cylinder #2 lean conditions so porting and correcting the airpaths can fix that too.
just look at all that can be ported in this stuff I've ported.. I'm running full ported setup , all my personal freinds are also and imo , $ for $ , other than a pulley reduction. It's one of the best upgrades I've done. Going from oem to the ported setup was night and day difference and the car after makes max boost so easy and throttle response is sooooo crisp too.
Hey Adam man, while you're here, gotta give you big ups for being so active and engaged here on NAM, I'm not the most prolific poster but I do lurk alot and your epic build thread is a stone cold classic, I meant to comment in it the other day just to say thanks for being here and livening up the place, your work ethic is inspirational and I absolutely love how you explore every single possibility with relentless enthusiasm, sometimes you get crap for it from people and I admire the way you respond to that aspect as well because you clearly lay out the explanatory thought process involved with what you were looking to achieve, as well as honestly say when something maybe didn't work out, all the while maintaining pure positive vibes of MOTORING ON!
I watched your TVS900 video and would love to hear any further opinions or observations you have on it, the TVS900 is obviously superior to the M45 but I just get a good kick of visceral emotional happyjuice from the louder whine so dunno if I'd dig it, but if I actually drove with one might change my mind to think HOLY CRAP! this thing pulls mighty strong so much so that I might not really miss the whine because the performance is so amped up.
:
Anyways,
about the coatings...
...Eaton does brag on them, mostly about better sealing to keep leakage in check:
"All Eaton supercharger components are produced with state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and feature a patented rotor coating for improved efficiency. Eaton’s powder coating fills gaps between rotor lobes, tips and faces to mitigate air leakage and creates a near-zero clearance between components, resulting in optimal performance."
As for early style versus late style rotor coatings...
...I've seen more instance of loss on the earlier light grey acrylic epoxy (or whatever it is?) moreso than the later abradable teflon (or whatever it is?)
This thread illustrates how big flakes may chunk off from the early gen coating:
Bet it was the spare from a full tuning kit. The NOS that was a fire sale, we bought all of them a couple years back, that was from like ~2012-13 production. No one hard them except us.
