Well, I noticed to day that the damn crank pulley has started wobbling. Ordered an ATI Super Damper this morning from Summit. No underdrive though. Not worth reduced alternator output, reduced cooling circulation, and of course lower A/C effectiveness. Sucks because I was planning on doing some suspension stuff (C6Z06 shocks, C5Z06 rear spring, C6Z51 sway bars) later in March over spring break. Now I just burned through half of that budget with just the balancer purchase. Oh well. Don't really want to all of a sudden have a hole in the hood or a toast steering rack if the stock pulley shoots off the crank. I think I pretty much know the answer but is a crank pulley replacement a DIY project? Thanks in advance as always.

 

http://www.streetlegaltv.com/tech-st...mper-correctly

 

Yea **** that. I'm just going to pay the professionals for this thing.

 

Be prepared to PAY...a lot of labor is involved in swapping out the damper. That's why I haven't done mine yet...

 

Got quoted $450 for labor today by a local shop. I almost pooped my pants.

 

Just make sure that you go to a shop that has done this before. Also, make sure that they use a NEW bolt and NOT use locktight (New GM factory bolt already has some thread fastener on it).

 

Step 1)...remove steering rack!!

 

Yea, the place who is going to do it specializes in nothing but LS stuff. They're definitely good people. I'd say the name but I'm not sure the forum rules on shops. I know you're not supposed to mention non-supporting vendors in the threads. What's the difference between the GM torque to yield bolt and the ARP crank bolt?

 

That's the step that convinced me that I should probably leave it to the pros. I'm pretty mechanically inclined, but I think I'd be in over my head with this one since I'd be working on jack stands and if you **** this up, it can have REALLY bad consequences.

 

I know what you mean. Also, for me, at least, I look at this job as a snowball rolling downhill...If you're in there, should you put the dowell pin in the crank? If so, do you put the pin in randomly, or do you get the tool that indexes the pin with the keyway in the crank that drives the oil pump....If you want to do that, you have to pull the front cover. Since you're in there, do you swap out the timing chain??

 

I'm opting not to swap the chain on mine since I've got < 48000mi and the car isn't beat on with any regularity whatsoever. I'll only be at bolt on power at most for at least the next 2 years anyways. After that I'll probably go heads/cam and change timing chain, oil pump, etc. Hopefully by then I'll have access to a lift and will have built a bigger tool collection. I'm still very much starting out in that regard.

 

And,might as well pull the heads, do a cam and lifters, port the heads or replace with aftermarket. Then new intake manifold, TB, headers.....yep, snowball city!

Ron

 

That article scared you away? C'mon man, it looks ugly, but all that clearance checking is a vital skill to have anyway. It's only a couple extra hours if you've never done it before. You already blew your suspension budget on the balancer itself, just imagine what that $450 is gonna do!

 

At this point, at least for me, I'd consider doing all that stuff. I have the time, and the car is just sitting in the garage, waiting for the snow to go away. But, I'm not a kid anymore, and crawling around in a 15-20* garage just doesn't have the appeal it used to.....

 

I'm going to see if anyone in the local Corvette club has access to a lift. If they do, I'll probably do it myself, assuming I can get access to any tools I would need to supplement what I already have. Dropping the steering doesn't look completely undoable, just a pain in the ***.

 

It is a bit of a PITA but worth the savings. I do have a lift in my garage so most would say it's a no-brainer at home but that doesn't make it any less work - just more convenient to work on AFA access. I have done this stuff with and without a lift and, yes, with a lift, sux less.

Just finished off my wife's 2002 C5's balancer while I was off for the holidays. I had a complete circumferential timing cover leak - cover has never been off, so go figure. I had to replace the water pump at the same time since that also started leaking recently as well. I took the opportunity to replace belts, belt tensioners, hoses, hose clamps, the timing chain, the harmonic balancer with an ARP bolt, and oil, oil filter and coolant. Car has ~34K miles on it.

While I was at it, I pinned the pulley to the crank in two spots, 180 degrees apart. I had a new timing cover with a new gasket and seal already pressed in it waiting in a storage cabinet as a spare. I was tempted to throw another heads cam in it since I was already pulling it apart but resisted since it's already a beotch getting the car to pass emissions here in the land of the hot rod.

Hey, at least she's good to go for quite a while and I did a lot of cleaning while I had all that crap out of the way in the engine bay.

 

Your last name wouldn't happen to be O'Houlihan, would it?

 

Nope.

 

Patches, good post, but it brings up a question that I've been mulling over. When you pull the front cover, in order to access the "hard parts", how great a leak potential is created where it seals to the oil pan?

TIA!

 

The entire perimeter of my timing cover was leaking anyway so I had to pull it to change the gasket. I changed the entire cover, pulley seal and gasket as I had a new cover with seals stored for a rainy day as it was. The one above had never been off before and I've never seen one leak from the factory like this one around the entire edge - was a bit strange. I did check the torque on all the bolts before changing it and they were spot-on.

I always apply a bead of high-temp silicone gasket maker to the lower edge of the timing cover before replacing it to minimize the chance of leaks from the pan/timing cover interface. I've never had one leak after doing that. There is a Kent-Moore alignment tool to align the timing cover to the bottem surface of the block but it's used with the oil pan off. I line everything up with the cover bolts slightly loose after the pulley is pressed on, torque the bottom bolts and then the rest.