Ok, so i was driving my car home one night and all of a sudden i notice it making a terrible noise - i baby it home and its making an awful clanking noise - like the crank is trying to walk its way out of the block. Upon further inspection i notice the Harmonic Balancer wobbling all over the place. First i check under the valve covers, everythings fine, so then i take off the belt and look at the H.B. I can literaly take the H.B and move it back and forth a good 1/4inch - what gives? how did it become like this and what can i do or what does it mean?

The car drove fine before this. I just recently had the valves redone at NLP and they did take off the timing cover to put of the MSD opti but its been driving fine for about a month since i've had it. Im not sure what else to do...can anyone help?

 

you can move it back and forth???????

does it move up and down,side to side as well?

check the center bolt, if tight, you broke your crank

 

Or, if you can slide it forward and back (in and out) relative to the front cover, you have lost the thrust surface on the mains or crank. Either way, not good.

 

its moves left to right and up and down, not in and out and yes the center bolt it tight - i can turn the motor over and have it run but with the h.b wobbling all over the place it sounds real bad

 

crank is broke at an angle

 

how could the crank be broke, this is a brand new golen 383 - its only has 10,000 miles maybe

 

Maybe the rubber in the damper worn out?

 

Perhaps you are not describing your problem enough to where people can understand what is really occurring. There is more than one thing that can make it wobble. You need to isolate it to the pulley or the hub.

 

Well i have an ati super dampner and since i dont have the timming cover off i can't see what its not attached to, but i can tell you from just looking underneath the car that it is pretty much free to move a 1/4in. in all directions except for in and out. The bolt in the center is tight or seems to be. should i try to unbolt it or take my timming cover off to expose more? Like i said this all happened out of the blue...my car even drove with this problem without power loss or so it seemed, i didnt take it up to redline or anything. This engine is maybe 2yrs old with 10,000 miles maybe, i hardy get to drive it. The most recent thing done was the valves being replaced due to them being bent, in the process i had NLP put on a new msd opti and since i got it back it ran fine for 2months, till now.

 

Shoebox is right. Before you unbolt the center hub, use the appropriate torx bit to unscrew the six countersunk capscrews that hold the outer ring to the hub. It should pull directly off when the capscrews are removed. If the hub still wobbles, remove the center bolt but when you do, it would probably be a good idea not to lay directly under it. If the crank snout is broken it will probably fall. You can do all that without removing the front cover or loosening the pan.

 

nice...will removing the outer ring throw off the balance? not that its a huge deal right now but just wondering

 

mine was kind of wobbling a long time ago, i replaced it and it stopped, so its not unheard of for it to go wrong.

 

When you post a question like this, it helps to have all the facts up front. You might want to use the "signature" section to list a bit more info about your can than you have there right now. That way, people would know you have an engine that is not stock, and that you are asking about aftermarket products that may exhibit behaviout that is a bit different than the stock parts.

You've mentioned its a Golen383, and you are running the ATI SuperDamper (its a 'damper', not a 'balancer').... is there anything else that might be helpful to know? You wouldn't happen to be running blower.... because I've seen two cases of the ATI SuperDamper hub failing when used in high boost blower applications.

 

My friend just had a similar problem to yours with a 347 stroker in his mustang. After about 4000 miles the damper started to wobble and we could turn it a 1/4 way in each direction. When we took the damper off, we saw that the key actually beat the key-way in the damper wider because it wasnt using the full depth of the key-way (the slot for the key in the damper). Tomarrow we're going to go and try to track down a thicker key to use the full depth of the damper. Unfortanetly he'll need a new damper too.

 

sorry to all, i have a golen 383 - steel crank, forged i beam rods, srp pistions, ported lt1 heads - the list is endless. its all N/A no boost.

i am running the ati superdamper (i still thought it was called a balancer as well) - it was installed all up at golen with the damper balanced on the engine dyno. I then imagin it was taken off for the MSD opti install and the new valves for the heads.