Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, Vancouver’s top rated, best reviewed auto repair service. Thirty eight years of serving all makes and models of cars in Vancouver. How’re you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Very well this morning.
Mark: So we’re talking about a 2012 Range Rover Supercharged. These are very expensive and very luxurious vehicles. What was going on with this SUV?
Bernie: Well, it’s a Range Rover Sport Supercharged and the issue is with a supercharger. There’s a sort of subtle clacking noise at the front of the supercharger you can hear when you’re revving the engine up but under certain conditions and certain speeds.
Mark: And what was required to fix that?
Bernie: Well fortunately not a complete supercharger replacement. There’s actually a piece, a nose cone or whatever, a nose drive assembly and inside there’s a couple of bearings and there’s a kind of I don’t know what you’d call it, a fancy coupler that couples the drive unit of the supercharger. And that unit, that little coupler tends to wear out causing the noises.
Mark: So what exactly wears inside the drive unit?
Bernie: Well let’s, why don’t I just get into some pictures. Let’s start with the vehicle. There’s, it’s a 2012 Range Rover Sport, you know nice wheels, what’s not to like other than the gas mileage and some of the repair costs. It’s a beautiful vehicle, powerful, sporty, pretty awesome. We’ll get into the supercharger. So this is the actual replacement piece. This is the view of the actual new part on the nose cone. This is actually what couples this part to the actual supercharger itself. I’ll show a couple more photos but you can see, there’s sort of, there’s like three pins, there’s two here, one’s hidden and these are on the drive unit. Then this coupler sort of isolates the engine spinning, you know like vibrations from the engine with the vibrations of the supercharger. There’s three pins that fit in here. These are on the supercharger, so that drives the supercharger. We’ll look at the, this is the old unit which is we’re looking at a different side of it but it’s definitely quite badly worn in these particular areas here. So that’s what causes that. When you feel the front, when you take the belt off you can feel a lot of play in the supercharger when you turn the pulley there’s a lot, there’s a tiny little bit with he new one, but there’s a lot with the older worn out unit. Just a couple more views. This is the top view of the engine with the, this is the supercharger, well supercharger actually sits under here, this is the intake manifold with the intercoolers but the drive bearing and nose cone, this is with things partially removed, you see that top piece removed, the supercharger sits in the middle here. This is where the actual supercharger blades are located in this area and this is the nose piece here. So it’s a complete replacement unit available from the Range Rover dealer.
Mark: So is this a new issue with Range Rover?
Bernie: Well this engine is actually used, it’s a five litre engine, it’s actually used in Range Rovers and a variety of Jaguar products and this issue happens to any of this generation of engine. Can’t remember the starting year but you know, it’s up to 2012 to 2015 somewhere in that range. Maybe a little further on either end but it’s not just unique to this engine and in the repair business you can often tell how common a problem is. If you call up a dealership and they have the part in stock that usually, especially an expensive piece, that usually tells me it’s a pretty common problem. So it’s definitely something we’ve done from time to time
Mark: And so since this was a Range Rover, was this an expensive repair?
Bernie: Oh yeah. It’s pretty labour intensive to take the piece off but the good news is you don’t have to replace the complete supercharger and there are actually bits and pieces available. If one were to take more time to order parts you know, through different sources than the dealership, you can actually buy some of these parts individually for a lot less money, if you have more time on your hands but to actually replace a complete supercharger, it is extremely expensive. But this part, was in the one to two thousand dollar price range. But much cheaper than a complete supercharger.
Mark: And how are Range Rover Sports for reliability?
Bernie: Overall they’re pretty good but you know again this is a very complex vehicle. So you’ve go little things like all supercharger bearing and couplers that wear out, there’s air suspension, there’s a lot of complexity to these vehicles. They’re good and you know, you will expect to spend a lot more money on repairs. Things like brakes wear out pretty fast, it’s a heavy, large, performance vehicle so they just end to wear through brakes and tires and so there’s a price to be paid for having the vehicle. But you know, it’s pretty awesome ride.
Mark: And what sort of horsepower does this vehicle have?
Bernie: I don’t know the actual horsepower but when you step on it, it really goes. I love superchargers because the power’s so immediate. I mean turbo chargers, a lot of manufacturers like Mercedes, has stopped using superchargers, they’ve gone straight to turbos for pretty much everything and I guess they’re more efficient overall but there’s and certainly get a lot of power but there’s immediacy about a supercharger. It’s just like when you stop on it but it just goes and so I mean, it’s really kind of fun in this vehicle. It really does move fast for a big heavy, I don’t know a 5,000 or more pound truck. It’s pretty awesome.
Mark: So there you go. If you need your Range Rover repaired in Vancouver, the guys to call are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 or check out their website pawlikautomotive.com or our YouTube Channel, we’ve got four years of videos other including quite a few about Range Rovers. Thanks Bernie
Bernie: Thanks Mark
