Vert Ventures, Part 1

March 15, 2003

The last two weeks our family has experienced a rash of just incredibly bad luck with cars from a mechanical standpoint. It started with my Suburban when the driver's side seat frame fractured and broke. The Suburban was at home with the seat out and the family was at my office when our '92 Custom Cruiser died. After a flatbed ride to the dealer it was determined that it needed a new fuel pump...and stabilizer links, an idler arm, intake manifold gasket, valve cover gaskets, a radiator, idle air valve, and an idler pulley. We plan on putting at least 300,000 miles on this car, and it only has 195,000 now, so we bit the bullet.

While Joy's wagon was sidelined, I put the seat back in the Suburban so that she could drive it and I started driving my new '65 Monza convertible. Of course, shortly thereafter the harmonic balancer on the vert separated, leaving me with my second towing bill in a week. The work on the wagon was wrapped up and I got my Suburban back, only to find that the front brakes sounded like two slabs of marble sliding together.

This is a long-winded introduction for what we did Saturday afternoon, which was to install a rebuilt harmonic balancer on the Vair. For anyone who may not know, the harmonic balancer is not just a pulley, but is instead a two part assembly, with a metal center section and outer metal ring held together by vulcanized rubber. It's purpose is to dampen crankshaft vibration, and act as a pulley as well. We basically followed the technique in the shop manual, and the job went smoothly. Here's how it is done.

First step is to remove the oil filter. This will provide clearance for the motor and the balancer as it is removed. Next, jack the back of the car up in the air. GROUP Red, welcome another set of wheels!

Here, of course, we have Jeff hard at work as usual while I am taking pictures. Despite the snow you see the temperatures yesterday and today were in the sixties, so it was a nice day to get outside and work on the car.

Once the car is on the stands, the next step is to remove the rear grille. This done, the shroud panel that goes behind the motor mount comes off with four screws. Once this was removed, we supported the engine with a jack and the Clark's engine cradle (who knew it would be used again so soon!). With the engine supported, we removed the two motor mount bolts and eased the motor downward on the jack. This is done to get the clearance necessary to pull the harmonic balancer.

After the motor was lowered, we removed the thin shrouding rail that connects the two rear shrouds and the motor mount bracket, which is bolted to the engine rear housing.

Once these parts are removed, we had a clear shot at the harmonic balancer. First we removed the bolt and washer from the end of the crank that holds the balancer in place, and then we attached a harmonic balancer puller. The puller threads into the two holes on the balancer and has a threaded center shaft so that using a ratchet the shaft can push against the crank to remove the balancer.

Here's a picture of the puller and the old balancer.

You can see the two parts of the balancer in this picture. There was not a shred of rubber left on either part. Fortunately, the outer ring stayed in place, rather than, say, launching through the oil filter or doing something else equally creative.

With the old balancer removed, we applied Locktite to the inside of the new balancer's center hole, slid the balancer in place, and torqued the center bolt to spec. We then reversed the removal steps. Piece of cake! Here Jeff torques the motor mount brackets.

After we finished, we fired up the motor, and found that it ran much more smoothly after the old balancer was replaced. This is an easy part to overlook, but important to the health of your motor. Before failing, the old one wobbled significantly when the starter was being cranked.

After we finished the project we went out for a top-down cruise. Awesome!

 Vert Ventures Part 2

Vert Ventures Index

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