harmonic balancer from HELL!!!

[MalcolmV8]

OK my day starts out relatively simple, buddy of mine wants to change out the front main seal on an 04 dodge dakota 4.7 v8. Sure swing by, use my tools, I'll lend a hand if you get stuck.

Turns out he has an aftermarket unit on there installed in an unknown manner by a shop he paid to do it a few years ago. So I didn't have the right puller tools, first of countless trips to auto parts store and got a universal kind.

Well that harmonic balancer is on there so incredibly tight he can't budge it. I hand him a breaker bar and get back to working on my Cobra.
He's still stuck. Well here's a piece of square tubing pipe about 3 foot in length, stick it over the end of the breaker bar and go for it. Nope still can't. He pulls really hard and strips the puller. He gets another one and this time I told him I'd heat up the balancer for him so I got the torch out and heated it. Still no dice. I even helped pull on the breaker bar/piping extension. Nothing.

Then I notice something VERY horrible. The balancer completely covers the crank so you can't press up against it so he slide a rounded rod inside the crank bolt hole for the balancer to press up against. Well that got compressed down inside the threads of the crank and is lodged in there with who knows how many tons of pressure. Nightmare begin.

Wow I couldn't believe that. Now I'm wondering what in the world we are going to do. So I thought I'd try drilling it out but that rod jammed in there, which came with the puller set, is hardened and my drill bits are barely marking it. We struggle with this all Saturday afternoon till after midnight. Call it a day and start up again first thing in the morning. I went and bought a cobolt drill bit and it cut into there but its so deep inside the crank none of my easyouts could reach it. So I took an easyout and welded a bolt to it and slide that down and used a socket and hammer and tried turning it out. That metal is so hard and so stuck in there all it did was strip the easyout.

I thought about tapping a thread and putting a bolt in there and then spinning a nut down till it hits the balancer and pulling it out that way. Once again it's so deep my taps won't even reach it.

My next plan I guess is to find a large drill bit and drill out the hole and then find an M14 with a 1.5mm pitch and re-tap it back to original specs and hopefully get that original bolt back in.

What a nightmare weekend. Around 9pm Sunday I was tired and worn out from fighting it all weekend and a buddy came over to lend a hand and take over. He's a diesel mechanic by trade and fairly good at this stuff. He even tried heating that balancer till it was glowing red around the center and using pry bars, hammers and such and couldn't believe how tight it was on.

He had some nifty tools, like reverse direction drill bits and taps etc. to get stuck bolts out but he couldn't budge that rod either. In fact his reverse direction drill bits couldn't even drill that hard metal.

Today he's supposed to be getting some better tools from his tool box at work and we'll see what we can do. This sucks big time. Anyone else ever have a nightmare like that?

I'm kicking myself for not paying more attention to what he was doing and preventing that whole fiasco in the first place.

Just thought I'd share. The lesson is NEVER EVER stick anything in the threaded bolt hole area of a crank. Big NO NO!!

Later
Malcolm

[Warpig Racing]

thats one of those frustrating things that makes you want to push it off a cliff.

[MalcolmV8]

Oh indeed. If I never see under the hood of another dodge dakota it will be to soon lol.

Got my buddies snap-on screw extractors and wow those are nice. Hammered them in and they turned that slug but it was not in the threads or very lightly. It did not thread out, it just turned on the spot, very tight but just turned.

So I tried tapping the hole I had finally gotten drilled in it but that slug was so hard it just stripped my taps. I went and bought a kobolt tap which was really hard and it bit into the metal of the slug but the slug just turned once I had enough pressure on it. Ahhh very frustrating.

So finally I got some threaded rod and grinded a point on it and just hammered the hell out if till it was partially logged into the hole drilled into that slug and then spun a nut down till it hit the balancer and kept turning and it pulled the slug out. Wow I couldn't believe it when it finally came out!!

After that it was but just 2 hours till everything was done and the truck was running again.

[cgrey8]

So in retrospect, what was the source of the problem?

[MalcolmV8]

The problem is that he should NEVER have stuck anything in that bolt hole in the snout of the crank. Once I got it out I showed him how to put the crank bolt back in there, turn it back out a few turns to have some slack and then have the puller push on the crank bolt and it slid the balancer right off. I had to heat the balancer with a torch though to free it from the crank.

[Warpig Racing]

Well glad to hear you got it out.

was the balancer reusuable? i figured that heating it up would cause the rubber to melt or break down.

[MalcolmV8]

It was an after market balancer and it still appeared usable. In a high performance situation I probably would have tossed it but the owner of the truck wanted me to re-use it so I did. He still has the stock one at home if this one gives him trouble.

[87ranger]

i think i speak for everyone on this board, this thread is worthless with out pictures