Went to a buddy of mine's house yesterday to remove his Stage V ported blower so that we could inspect his torque plate. Took 65 minutes to remove the blower and the inspection revealed that the torque plate was compromised as there were several cracks that had developed.
This Stage V was completed in March, 2009 and the car had approximately 4,000 miles of use since the install. There was no front tack weld on the plate and while the plate appeared to have no immediate risk of failure through becoming unattached or pieces breaking off of it, it was the early run thin aluminum and was pretty flimsy.
My buddy and I discussed the options and came up with the following:
1) The Stage V was still under warranty and thus Steigemeier would replace the early addition plate with the upgraded version, with no charge. We figured downtime of at least a week.
2) Ship it to Steigemeier and just have them remove the plate permanently with same downtime parameters.
3) We just remove the plate altogether right there in his garage.
4) Leave it the way it is and reinstall it......
Obviously, the 4th option was probably not the best way to proceed. My buddy really didn't feel like having his Cobra down for any length of time so Options 1 and 2 were out. So we decided to just permanently remove it right there in his garage.
Using a pair of tin snips, we cut the plate down the middle. No problem, took 3 minutes.
Then, we took a pair of plyers and using an up and down motion, seperated each half of the plate off of the weld. Took another 3 minutes.....
Using a 4" cutting disc attached to a power drill we ground the welds off of the sides. (Sorry I don't have pics of this.....got busy and forgot!). We carefully blocked off the rotor and boost bypass areas so that no shavings could get inside the blower, and then used carb cleaner to thoroughly clean the affected underside areas of the Eaton. Probably took about 20 minutes for this.
Reinstalled the intercooler and threw the blower back in the car. Total time of operation taking our time and eating Dunkin Donuts and drinking Starbucks was about 4.5 hours start to finish. Probably be a good idea for those of you that are running Stage V's to pull it off of there and give it a good inspection.
This Stage V was completed in March, 2009 and the car had approximately 4,000 miles of use since the install. There was no front tack weld on the plate and while the plate appeared to have no immediate risk of failure through becoming unattached or pieces breaking off of it, it was the early run thin aluminum and was pretty flimsy.
My buddy and I discussed the options and came up with the following:
1) The Stage V was still under warranty and thus Steigemeier would replace the early addition plate with the upgraded version, with no charge. We figured downtime of at least a week.
2) Ship it to Steigemeier and just have them remove the plate permanently with same downtime parameters.
3) We just remove the plate altogether right there in his garage.
4) Leave it the way it is and reinstall it......
Obviously, the 4th option was probably not the best way to proceed. My buddy really didn't feel like having his Cobra down for any length of time so Options 1 and 2 were out. So we decided to just permanently remove it right there in his garage.
Using a pair of tin snips, we cut the plate down the middle. No problem, took 3 minutes.
Then, we took a pair of plyers and using an up and down motion, seperated each half of the plate off of the weld. Took another 3 minutes.....
Using a 4" cutting disc attached to a power drill we ground the welds off of the sides. (Sorry I don't have pics of this.....got busy and forgot!). We carefully blocked off the rotor and boost bypass areas so that no shavings could get inside the blower, and then used carb cleaner to thoroughly clean the affected underside areas of the Eaton. Probably took about 20 minutes for this.
Reinstalled the intercooler and threw the blower back in the car. Total time of operation taking our time and eating Dunkin Donuts and drinking Starbucks was about 4.5 hours start to finish. Probably be a good idea for those of you that are running Stage V's to pull it off of there and give it a good inspection.
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