Does the engine work without the Supercharger?

Asked by Dave007 Sep 18, 2008 at 05:52 PM about the 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix 2 Dr GTP Supercharged Coupe

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

The belt on my 1997 Supercharger is going and I am wondering if the belt breaks will the engine still operate???

12 Answers

315

no, the belt driving the charger is the serpintine belt that also drives the componants.. so if the belt goes the water pump , alternator , power steering and A/C will not turn... the car will run on its battery.. and if your lucky you got 15 mins before the battery dies.... giving the car dosent overheat due to the waterpump not spining....Joe

4 people found this helpful.
285

wrong, it is separate. you can run the engine without the supercharger belt, it will just suck miserably. you will have very little power, and disgusting gas mileage. visit www.clubgp.com or www.gpona.com for more information.

16 people found this helpful.
30

Yes, the engine will run, but it won't be very efficient. You can drive without a supercharger, I wouldn't recomend doing it for very long. But, no it won't HURT anything.

3 people found this helpful.
21,215

Jason and Joseph is correct. I had to drive mine for a while after it suffered a snout bearing failure. Gas mileage was about 10 mpg and acceleration sucked. Why are you wanting to run without the supercharger?

4 people found this helpful.
85

Ya everyones right except for the first guy. Of course you can run it but like they all said your power will suck. Its like taking a turbo off a diesel there goes almost half of your horsepower.

345

I have actually heard of people getting better MPG's with the belt off...

1 people found this helpful.
285

as far as i know, it really depends on the setup. the engine is designed for the extra air in the cylinders(forced induction) and if there is less air than it needs, it will run less efficently.

4 people found this helpful.
130

5yrs later... Our supercharger belt broke and the only thing I noticed was that the mpg in city driving went down 2 or 3 mpg to about 16 mpg. On the highway it still was getting 29 mpg which has been normal for around the past 200,000 miles. The performance when hitting the gas hard was also worse but not much worse than a non-supercharged 3.8l buick engine that we used to have in our LeSabre.

13 people found this helpful.

I have a 2002 40th anniversary edition, curious does the supercharger belt run anything else?

10

no the supercharger belt does it run anything else it's just a separate belt to run specifically the supercharger

20

I had the idler pulley break and the supercharger belt broke on my 98 Riviera. I hardly noticed any difference. The shop says they may not be able to get a new pulley, in which case I will run it without the supercharger.

2 people found this helpful.
20

If the barrons in the 1998 supercharge can I just unhook it and be fine, if I dont care about speed.

2 people found this helpful.

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