Stuck balancer

[Schurkey]

I bought my own puller. It's now a shell of its former self, as the center hole is cracked and the arms are bent from massive amounts of torque straining to pull the stupid balancer off.

Of course you broke the tool. You have the yoke upside-down. The bolt heads should be thrusting against the FLAT side of the puller yoke, not the tapered side. The angled surface the bolts are pulling against is the reason the bolts bent.

You should have some grease on the pressure screw threads, too.

If there's anything left of the tool, flip the yoke the other way, assure that the puller bolts are threaded fully into the damper holes. Heat the damper and let 'er rip. When the pressure screw is TIGHT, remove the wrench and hit the pressure screw with the biggest hammer you own. Don't mess up the wrenching surface, but knock the end of the screw HARD, straight through to the crank--NOT SIDEWAYS. Tighten some more, hammer some more. At some point, the damper is bound to begin moving.

The pressure screw appears to have Acme threads. That's a good sign.

 

[PlayingWithTBI]

Here's a puller I bought at Harbor Freight for ~$85. This ones for removing and installing them. When my son saw it he took a picture of it and went back to yell at the Matco rep for selling him Chinese stuff with a Matco label on it. He also paid about 3 times as much as I did, LOL.

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As @Schurkey said, keep the threads lubricated and use a BFH!

 

[Schurkey]

Matco makes nothing but (some of) their tool boxes. Everything else is bought-in from outside suppliers. The origin of Matco was as the tool-box supplier/subdivision to Mac Tools. (Mac Allied Tool COmpany--MATCO) The early Matco catalogs I had even showed that they kept the Mac Tools item numbers when they broke away from Mac. (i.e., they were using the same tool suppliers as Mac was, at least for awhile.)

There's a couple of HUGE threads at www.garagejournal.com regarding the "Tool Truck Equivalent" stuff--buying direct from Lang or Mastercool or Trusty-Cook or any of the thousand other suppliers to the Big (Expensive) Names.

One thing I will caution you about. There's DIRECT EQUIVALENTS--tools of the same quality, made in the same factory by the same people, but sold with a different brand name, perhaps a different warranty and different colored blow-molded box--and there's KNOCKOFFS, (counterfeits) which look the same as the "big name" stuff, but may be built out of inferior materials, using inferior processes, and only exist to scam the consumer who is tricked into thinking the JUNK is "equivalent" to the Big Name stuff.

 

[8T7K5]

Tried heat. Tried a hammer on the end of the long bolt. I even turned the crow foot thing around. It's still stuck.

 

[Schurkey]

Tried heat. Tried a hammer on the end of the long bolt. I even turned the crow foot thing around. It's still stuck.

I don't know what to tell you. Time for professional help. Perhaps they'll have a bigger/stronger puller tool, and oxy-acetylene for heat.

Kinda wonder if the key has moved out of position, or partially-sheared or something so that the key is binding the assembly. Not impossible, but pretty rare.

 

[PlayingWithTBI]

Not impossible, but pretty rare.

Agreed, Woodruff keys don't usually shear or dislodge in their position especially in this application. Good luck with it. The only other option would be to cut it in half and break it free, not fun!

 

[8T7K5]

What I'm really concerned with is that the crank snout might be bent. The original reason I'd gone this far was to replace it because of an engine wobble, which as I said before I figured was from someone jacking up the engine using the crank pulley. Turns out after I pulled the pulley it's in pretty bad shape and does indeed look like it's been used as a jack point. Could a bent snout keep it from coming off? Seems like it would have to be bent pretty bad for that to happen and if it was bent that bad it would be obvious.

 

[Schurkey]

The crank snout might be bent. I don't see that as a problem for removing the damper--the snout wouldn't be bent where it goes through the damper, it'd be bent behind the damper.

You'd also--most likely--have an oil leak at the damper seal on the timing cover. The seal can accept a limited amount of static off-center (some seal better than others) but dynamic off-center--the damper sealing surface wobbling around as the crank turns--would surely cause leakage.

Wild Guesses:
1. Someone installed the damper with threadlocker as a sealant between damper and crank.
2. Damper is an excessively-tight press fit on the crank. Common with aftermarket dampers, not-so-common with OEM dampers.
3. Damper has fretted on the crank snout from micro-vibration. More-or-less welded-together in spots.
4. Low-quality puller can't develop enough pulling force

 

[54vicky]

a little late maybe but here goes if you use shorter bolts bringing the tool closer to the damper and get a grade 8 1/13 fine bolt instead of the bolt that is now with tool they are to soft and gall under load.use a lube also.the ideal way is in combination with what I wrote is to use an impact gun it wil come off.the impact vibrations help immensely in helping removal.if you do not have an impact you should be able to rent one if no compressor a good electric one will surprise you as to ability.good luck trying to heat will do no good getting hot enough will affect the elastomer bonding.I should have added that if the bolt does not have a long enough threaded portion use a slug to keep from screwing up the crank threads.I have collection of slugs just for cases like this.

 

[Schurkey]

get a grade 8 1/13 fine bolt instead of the bolt that is now with tool

Huh?

Are you thinking he should replace the pressure screw? The pressure screw appears to have Acme threads, although the photo doesn't have enough resolution to be absolutely certain. A regular bolt will have tapered "pointy" threads which won't be compatible with the female threads in the yoke.