1988 3.8l crankshaft balancer free play

[heidigirl]

while idling at a stop light last night, my engine suddenly began to rattle. i was only a block from home, so i nursed it home. when i removed the serpetine belt, i discovered there to be 20-60 degrees of rotational free play in the balancer. the engine starts easily and seems to operate ok. there is 175 thousand on the odometer. what are your thoughts on this problem?

[heidigirl]

whew!! feel like i dodged a bullet here. turned out to be literally, nothing more than a bad harmonic balancer.

[Bob]

When something like that panic does tend to set in... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Glad it worked out economically AND conveniently. My brother and I went on a 1000 mile trip with my pickup (GM 6.5 diesel) to get a car a few years ago and got to within 150 miles of home and the belt tension adjuster failed in a tynsy wiesy town with one garage!

I was lucky the guy was good but couldn't get us the parts till the next morning so we had a nice stay in a small hotel with a small bar for entertainment.

[img]graemlins/beers.gif[/img]

The car was a 4 speed with a 2" reciever hitch on it (pictured below, used for pulling a boat), and even though it wasn't yet transfered yet we were tempted to back it off the trailer and load up the pickup and continue our journey. If it wouldn't attract too much attention maybe no one would have notice that we didn't have plates