from the link you posted:

From Eaton:
Q: How often do I need to change the oil in my supercharger?
A: The sealed oil reservoir in a supercharger is designed to last the life of the vehicle. Changing the oil is not recommended unless you suspect contamination, leakage, or other issues like bearing failure. Also, if your vehicle has an abnormally heavy duty cycle, such as racing or towing, you could consider changing the oil at regular intervals such as 20k, 30k, 50k, or 100k miles depending on usage.

in the link you posted, there is info (allegedly) from eaton acknowledging the possibility of oil leaks. and they suggest you could change the oil as often as 20k miles! you'd be 9x behind on your oil change at that rate.

look, you trust your sources and that's fine. it's your car and your money to do with how you want. i really don't care if you treat the supercharger as a wear item that you don't touch until it fails and you have a formula to justify your costs. whatever - go for it. be sure to post what happens whenever you do address the s/c.

all that said, you'll never know if you're low on oil if you don't inspect it. so you're just missing the boat if you can't accept the POSSIBILITY that changing the oil could extend the life of your supercharger. if it is leaking and on the way to premature failure, you'll never know b/c you won't see the leak externally. that's all anyone is really trying to convey, anyway.

 

Sounds to me like Eaton is just covering their ***. With recommended service intervals ranging from 20k to essentially never, it is easy to see why MINI chose the latter. I myself, wouldn't have purchased my R53 if the service interval on the s/c was 20, or even 50k.

 

haha - I normally don’t tell. Last time I did cooling system - all hoses - including octopus, swapped PS pump, and some other small stuff.

 

I'm happy to turn a wrench for someone else. But there's no price to be put on using my tools in my garage.

 

It's crazy to not preemptively change the oil, at least every 100K miles. I bought my 04 with 160K miles, taking a gamble on the supercharger condition since there was no record of it being serviced. No rattles but the car didn't seem to be making as much power as it should've, and I figured it was just the BPV. While the BPV was indeed bad, when we pulled the supercharger, "oil" remaining would be a vast overstatement... There was only a small amount of sludge with metal shavings, plus a ton of play in the rotors. Would that have been avoided with a an oil change? I think yes, but either way, new superchargers are expensive and rebuilds may have questionable quality, so I say do the preventative maintenance.

 

I recently picked up my '06 R52 with now 51k miles on it. The supercharger has never been serviced. I see lots of recommendations to service it at 100k but am wondering if, due to age, it's time to service it. The car has seen relatively light duty, never raced, garage kept, and driven fairly gently (car used to be my dad's so I know the history). I'm pretty handy and generally do all car maintenance and repairs myself. Should I service it just based on age, or wait a few years?

 

if you could do it your self , I would , its only $20 for 2 bottles of oil , if you go a few post back , i did one for a client with 45k miles , not only was the oil black , but was low 2oz already.

 

Yeah, I'm sure I can do it myself, already had the car in front end service mode for a few things (thermostat, crank position sensor o-ring, one or two other things). If I'm in there anyway should I just do the whole service kit with water pump, gaskets, o-rings etc?
https://www.ecstuning.com/b-assemble...11490591ktkt1/

 

💯

 

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

Check out Superchargersonline.com for the proper Eaton oil and the rubber shock doughnut that is inside the snout.