cxxm

Just posting this in case someone runs into the same trouble.

I put on a new harmonic balancer (Schucks PB1200N, 1 year warranty) 5 years ago. About a month ago, it is like someone flipped a switch and the car just seemed unbalanced, even with its normal quirks. Anyway the other day, I noticed the crankshaft pulley was really wobbly shaking the whole engine. So I thought my pulley was bad.

My pulley has the triple grooves. None of the local parts places had any replacements. It took awhile, but I found one made by Trans Dapt 9608. Summit, Classic Industries and summit sells it.

The pulley factory part number is 14023145. The out diameter of the pulley is 7 ¾ inches and the depth is around 2 ¾ inches. The manufacture lists the diameter as 7.8 in and the depth as 2.17 inch.

The good news is that I did not need an impact wrench. I have a manual transmission, so I just put it in 4th gear and used a breaker bar. There was plenty of room. I did not have to take out the electric cooling fan or radiator. I also saw trick on line where you disable you distributor, use a breaker bar against the frame and bump the starter to get the crankshaft bolt out.

I installed the new pulley and fired it up. Still wobbly! Not the pulley….

There are no horrible engine noises or oil loss out the front, so I figured the crank was ok. I got another harmonic balancer from Oreilly’s. It is the same part number, but now has the limited lifetime warranty. I tried to get them to warranty the old one, but no luck. They claimed it was a different manufacture even though it was the same part.

I got the old balancer off. The inner rubber ring had cracks through out it. The inner rubber ring is very small. Not even a ¼ of an inch wide. You have to look very close. The crack were very small, but a lot of them. The new balancer rubber ring was nice and smooth with no cracks.

Oreillys rents the puller and installation kits for the balancer. Definitely worth getting for the job. I had some guys trying to get me to hammer it on with a sledge, which I heard is very bad for the crankshaft. The balancer center hole that the crankshaft fits into is 2 ¼ inch long. The crankshaft does not go this whole distance and is not flush with the end of the balancer. I would say mine fitted a little over an inch on the balancer, which is when the crankshaft pulley lined up with the power steering pump pulley. You just slowly put on the balancer and every now and then put the pulley on to see if it lines up with the power steering pulley.

The engine runs great now. No more wobble……..

vetteoz

iTrader: (13)

When they go really bad the outer ring will move out of position

cxxm

Here are a couple of pictures of the one I just took off. It is really hard to tell it is bad unless you look really close and see the small cracks.

GM B-body

Sooo... you don't recommend PowerBond PB1200N harmonic balancer?