I have a 200 cid 6 cylinder engine and I'm looking for any good tips for ways to keep the crank from turning when removing the bolts on the harmonic balancer. I have the thin sheet metal plate removed that exposes the flywheel but have not come up with a good way to jam a screwdriver or something in between the teeth and the bell housing in a way that can be done by myself. I really don't want to ask my 9-year old son (or my wife) to get under the car and hold the screwdriver in place while I grunt like a neaderthal with my breaker bar.

I was able to remove a couple of the bolts by wedging the screwdriver in there, but this results in the screwdriver getting stuck and the only way to get it out is to back the bolts out in the other direction. I'm afraid of bending or breaking something.

Also, it seems to take a tremendous amount of force with a harmonic balancer removal tool (Lisle) and I can't get it to budge. Could I be doing something wrong?

There must be a better way!

Why am I doing this? Well, to fix an oil leak at the seal pressed in the timing chain cover, of course.

 

Air compressor and Impact gun Might need to remove the radiator to get the clearance to fit the gun in there but a few short bursts (so you don't just spin the crank) and it will come right off.

 

OK, I don't have an air compressor/impact gun and don't want to buy another tool if I can help it.


Am I out of luck?

I washopeful thatmy breaker bar and a big piece of heavy pipe and the correct harmonicbalancer pullerwould allow me to conquertjos task. Is this just naive?

Actually, the required torque is not the problem---it's finding the way to keep the crank from turning without a second person. Obviously, an air compressor is one way.


Is it possible (and I'm just thinking out loud here) to remove one of the bolts from the flywheel, and replace it, temporarily, with a longer one that sticks out and catches on the bell housing, preventing the crank from turning as I'm torquing on the front of it? If I just had a hole in the flywheel, maybe I could put a temporary pin or bolt in there to keep it from spinning.

Any other tricks out there in the cyberworld?

 

There's another way to loosen it.

1) Unplug the coil wire ground.

2) depending on which way your motor cranks (hopefully clockwise), put a socket with a breaker bar on it and turn the crank clockwise until the breaker is resting on the ground.

3) get some duct tape to hold the socket and breaker bar in place. Dont' use a lot, just enough so the socket won't slip off.

4) crank the motor over very briefly.

5) the bolt should break free.

I used to do it that way before I bought a compressor. Getting the harmonic balancer back on it hard though unless you have an inspection plate on teh tranny that you can use to jam a wrench up there to keep the crank from turning while you tighten.

 

as suggested here I re-applied two of my balancer pulley bolts leaving enough bolt exposed to use a flat bar between the two bolts as the counter force.
I had my starter off, so to torque down the balancer, I leaned over the passenger side to hold the correct socket with an extension on flexplate bolt while I torqued with the right hand.

 

Thanks for your ideas.

The idea that I went with is one that I heard from a guy in my neighborhood who has lots of experience building engines. He said to feed some twine into one of the cylinders through the spark plug hole, and to feed enough in there so that the piston will stop before top dead center. I'll be darned if that did not work perfectly. Saves a lot of time climbing under to car to jam a screwdriver in the ring gear on the flex plate. And I didn't have to make my wife get under the car.

The other thing I discovered, and I'll share it here to save others the trouble, is that my difficulty removing the harmonic balancer came from the fact that I had an accessory pulley bolted on the front of my harmonic balancer. It is not clear to me, why, in the life of this car, someone added a third sheave. The stock balancer comes with two integral sheaves, one for the fan/alternator, and one for the power steering pump. A third would be needed, I imagine, if the car had air conditioning. I know that manual transmission versions of the I6 had something called a "Thermactor" emission control system that used an air pump, so maybe that is what a third sheave might be needed for. Anyway, none of this matters, because I don't have A/C, I don't have an air pump, and I only have two belts. And as I write this, I'm realizing that the third sheave might be what my power steering pump belt was connected to---the middle of the three sheaves must have been the one that was unused. I didn't think to take a picture before I started, but I bet when I get it all back together, I'm going to find that the power steering belt lines up with the accessory pulley.

Why am I sharing this? To save others some trouble, I guess. Because I followed the instructions on the harmonic balancer puller, with the crank bolt installed,without realizing that there was no way the thing was coming off with the accessory pulley in the way. What I have is a car that is not stock, and I keep getting clues to the kind of work that has been done to it over the years. With the I6, over a 40 year history, there are many opportunities for mixing and matching various engine components. My fan is a six blade design andhas a C9XX part number. The original I6 had a 4-blade fan. The timing cover has a D2XX part number on it, yet another part made in the 70's. The head and valve cover are from 1973.

This morning, I removed the old seal on the timing cover and, as I expected, like every other rubber component on this car, it was hard and brittle and not sealing very well.

I'd be interested if anyone else has had similar experiences. Maybe I just want to know that I am not alone.

 

you want to be careful with putting rope or twine into the cylinder, i have heard of someone who did this to change valve seals and the rope got a knot in it and he had to pull the head off to get the rope out. Glad you didn't have this problem and happy to hear you got it off.

 

As you might expect, I was careful. I tried to think of everything that might go wrong if I jammed rope in the cylinder. I used a nylon rope that would be unlikely to tie itself into aknot on its own while no one was looking. I also put a lot of faith in the advice of a guy who has built/restored a lot of cars over the years. This procedure just felt a lot better for me than the trick of jamming a screwdriver in the ring gear of the flex plate.

The combustion chamber is really quite small (52 cc)at top dead center so it didn't take much rope to stop the crank from turning.

 

I found a photoof the engine compartment before I pulled the harmonic balancer off. Sure enough, the power steering pump is connected to the accessory pulley bolted to the harmonic balancer.

Step one: Remove any accessory pulleys bolted to the harmonic balancer before you use a damper puller tool or you will almost certainly break something!



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