well seeing as im waiting for mr dvla man to give me back my V5, and CTS to finish building my gearbox as well as everything else (rear disk conversion and megajolt), i thought id finally get round to having a look at my dads shorrock supercharger. This is likely to be a very long term project.. but I’ll probably use this thread to log all the other stuff I do to the car in the mean time. My car to date is in the your retro's section here.
the story so far: the supercharger was removed from my dads Vauxhall viva road rally car about 30 years ago because it kept melting pistons and generally being an arse, he then put it in a nice dry barn where it lived until someone broke in and stole some farm equipment, he then moved it to a storage garage and left it under an old vintage car (this was about 17 years ago) unfortunately he didn’t put it at the back on a shelf, instead it was left on the floor not far from the door which wouldn’t close and so being in the middle of the peak district saw a fair amount of harsh Derbyshire weathering.
he then let on a while ago in a discussion about his rallying days that he still had it, and where it was.. bargain im thinking what better then a period bolt on to add to my car, however its not looking to tidy now. being mainly alloy it isnt as bad as it could be. but thats only externally... i then found that Allards (who were dealers/specialists in Shorrock superchargers back in the 60s) are still going, and better still Alan Allard the very man who installed the supercharger to my dads car is still running the company.. so some emails and phone calls later im a little more clued up as to what i need to look for and check to see if my supercharger is usable.
so armed with some ancient photocopied photocopies of someone’s photocopy of the disassembly instructions i set to having a peek inside:
from the outside it doesn’t look too good, but if you rub the alloy bits it comes up ok, I think from the way its corroded the SU took most of the weathering, which is good as its closed and should have stopped all the crap getting into the blower.
well the instructions were pretty useless, half the text was missing and you couldn’t make out what was in the pictures, I knew the backplate would have to come off, as its held together that way, and all the bolts came out with minimal effort so I could remove the SU and outlet pipe.. but the backplate wouldn’t come off, looking at the instructions and piecing bits together I was trying to take off the wrong end, not only that but I need a ‘two 3/16ths whitworth removal screws’. And the pulley and nut holding it on are rusted to hell.
but having a cheeky look down the ports it actually dosnt look too bad, the bits I could get at cleaned up with no surface corrosion.. but really I need to get into it properly to tell as im guessing the worst bits will be where the steel vanes have contact corroded with the alloy bits.
But my main problem is where to get some whitworth removal screws from, they don’t have them anywhere I looked, the only thing I could think of would be to buy a 3/16ths whitworth die and make my own from some bar, if anyone could help id greatly appreciate it , as its pointless sending it to someone to rebuild if its nackered and taking the backplate of is relatively simple.
and sorry for rambling on
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