OK, new here....but WOW...great info & articles.

1st...gotta say that husband was in LOVE with the GTA in high school....so when a racer at our local track was selling his recently, guess what he just thought our son had to start with as a project car when he turned 16??? (I wanted to get him a barely running S10)

But I have to admit, we have a lot of fun popping out the TTops and cruising. The guy did some mods to it, stuck a 410 (?) rear end in it for when they raced it at the track, said he rebuilt the engine and tranny, bigger cam (I'll admit...this doesn't mean much to me ).

About a week after driving it to school and back (our rule is that for the 1st 3 months he can only drive it in town....he's just like his dad and I know what that means for this car!). About a block from home, the harmonic balancer came off. Hubby said it looked like this had happened before. He ended up getting a new one, "JB welding" the key, and doing some work on the crankshaft to "fit" it better. Anyone else know if this is a common issue? Makes me nervous to (eventually) let him take it faster than 30mph ....

Yeah, I know.....I'm a mama bear.... Any recommendations?

 

None of that should have been necessary. The balancer is an interference fit on the nose of the crank, which should have been more than enough to hold it in place, and then the crank bolt makes doubly sure that it's going nowhere.

 

I had the harmonic balancer fly of my 85 SC once. I used black threadlock on it and it never occured again.