My car is now a week old to me today. I've done a full tuneup through the week including water pump and several other things not in the tune up list. While doing the plugs and wires today I noticed the harmonic balancer wobbles about 1mm of deflection or so. I have no way to know how long it has been doing it, but the engine is not leaking anything at all, no noises, and runs like a top so I know I have caught it early before it can rattle my crank bearings.

My question is how much it will bother it if I can't get a new balancer here before two weeks or so. Any risk of causing any noticeable wear on the crank bearings if it is taken care of within the month?

 

Order one tomorrow and install it when it gets here.
If you can go with out driving the car it's better.
You never know when one of those things is going to break......

 

Should there be any concern over the vibration affecting the crank bearings? I've heard that so many times.

 

Yes, it is bad. Make sure that it is just the balancer that is wobbling and not the crankshaft itself. If its the shaft, then you’ve got bigger problems. Eyeball the center bolt on the balancer and see if it is moving. If it is, then the crank is wobbling.

Good luck...

 

If you could see (with super-vision) the front end of the crank wobbling don't even worry about the bearings, they are gone.
Better test of the balancer woild be to take it off, chuck it in an engine lathe and use a dial indicator to see how bad it really is.
Nothing you can do about repairing the thing anyway......

 

The deflection I am seeing is more indicative of the balancer worn

 

Yeah, you don’t need super-vision. Just stick mirror between the balancer and the radiator. Look at the big 22mm bolt (or something close to that) in the middle of the balancer. If its wobbling while the motor is running then the crank is unbalanced and your hosed. If it spins smooth but the balancer wobbles, then the balancer is bad.

Good luck...