Stuck crankshaft pulley bolt

[Deleted member 144409]

Howdy,

I think I've searched what I can on 4x4 Wire, EP, on MMUSA, am now cross-posting and am stuck. Literally. I'm trying to get the harmonic balancer/crankshaft pulley bolt off for timing belt, valve cover gasket, et al repairs/ maintenance on my 89 Raider, 3.0, manual. I've tried:

- the "ribbed v-belt" trick,
- bought a fancy crankshaft pulley holder
- dumped a couple of tanks of air into the impact wrench.
- 3+' breaker bar and today a 5' breaker bar (but not much clearance with the hood on)
- a fair amount of Preston and Blaster penetrating lubricant (from the concave side, not the belt side).
- Foul language

I'll be particularly annoyed if I find out the threads are reversed and I've been going the wrong direction...

I'm not confident in trying the starter trick. Especially since there are guts from the engine all over the garage I don't want to put back on (lot of stuff moving from the donor and hoping to post a thread about moving AC from a 91).

Any tricks or thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[nckwltn]

Threads are normal, counter clockwise will remove it.

I would think that with a big breaker bar it would come free easily.

How about pull out your torque wrench, put it at the 120 or so ft lbs that the bolt requires for tightening (verify with the FSM), and try to loosen until you've put that amount or torque into removing. That should give you a benchmark on how much force is required. Or start lower, like 90 ftlbs.

I'm concerned that if you turn too much with the breaker bar, you might twist the crank bolt in half... especially if you have the older rolling pin style bolt.

Sent from my SM-P580 using Tapatalk

 

['round n' back again]

this troubles me.the darn things should not b that tight. i assume u know what your doing, from the sound of it, but check for a weld anyway that might have been done to keep the thing tight.

my trick, though its not a good one, is to heat and quench the bolt if its tight the tight is often under the bolt head flange and its mating surface rather than the threads themselves.
i hope its just red thread locker that is your problem

last and likeliest is your air gun may not have the snort it once did. try another known good gun.

i dont like breaker bars asthey break things and its hard to apply consistent pressure

 

[Toasty]

If it's a red thread locker deal some heat will help, bot so much that you burn everything. On your umpact gun, what kind of gun and air supply are we talking? Could be that you need more grunt.

 

[coffeegoat]

Here's a good trick if you can make it work. It saved my wife's old Saab, someone had used an impact wrench to tighten the oil plug and stripped the head.

Heat up the bolt and surrounding area, I don't care how, heat gun, torch (carefully), induction coil, whatever. Once it gets nice and warm, for preference too hot to touch hit it with freeze spray and immediately try to pull the bolt. You can buy specific freeze spray from amazon or similar or just take a normal bottle of canned air (the dust off stuff) and use it upside down. The expansion/contraction has a pretty good chance to break the bolt free from whatever is holding it and because you've heated up the area around it it will be expanded while the bolt preferentially shrinks.

On mine I ended up using a similar 5' breaker bar arrangement, it wasn't pretty but it did work and I liked being able to push gently with a big lever rather than push hard with a small one to avoid slipping and hitting my face on something...

Good luck stuck bolts are the worse... though perhaps not as bad as sheared bolts.

 

[Deleted member 144409]

Wow...thanks guys...follow up and questions...

@nckwltn - I hadn't even considered shearing it off...yikes. My 16" torque registered 120. If my math is correct, my 3' bar is yielding 270 ft/lbs.

@round and toasty - I maxed out the tank at 120 and the wrench at it's highest level (sufficiently oiled). They're 15 years old, probably, but don't get daily use by any means. I was going to see if the local tool rental had something with more umpf...will that matter given my torque measurement?

@toasty - I can't tell if there's any locktite. It's the old style bolt so I just see a lot of metal that is making me cry.

@coffeegoat - I considered heating it but wasn't sure where to aim the flame as there's a lot going on down there. Good stuff. Face + Tools = Bad. Should I cut off the belt...which prevents my next solution...

Clearly I want to do all this on my own and I've learned more about engines in the last 4 months than I've learned in the last 30 years. At what point do I put the engine back together and drive it/have it towed to someone with bigger toys? Which I DO NOT want to do.

Thanks again and in advance. Y'all are super helpful.

David

 

['round n' back again]

get a different gun. impacts are less damaging than a breaker bar.

heat and quench is risky. but might help. might make the bolt brittle and break it also. ive done both; remove the bolt smooth like butter and felt it snap.


breaker bars tend to twist the bolt metal in a spiral, and subsequent torque will seperate the metal molecules and it limply gives way to pressure; a sickening feeling..

im going to rely on previous advice, try a better gun.


maybe maybe, you can heat the pulley hub around the bolt head, and cool it with spray lube. as the heated metal contracts it will hopefully draw the lube into the opened crevice under the bolt head, made by expansion.

but this is diddling around the subject. ultimately , unless you have compromised the structure of the bolt, torque is what will loosen this bolt, the best way to apply torque is to use the impact gun.

 

[coffeegoat]

Well for reference, my little bitty impact wrench is rated at 500 ft*lbs breaking torque, and it couldn't loosen my crankshaft bolt - hence the 5 ft breaker bar...

A bigger impact wrench can push >1000 ft*lbs of breaking torque.

 

['round n' back again]

your little bitty may have a limp ********, try another gun

 

[coffeegoat]

I bought it for getting in tight places like exhaust manifold bolts - try fitting a big gun in there :wings:

Actually it worked brilliantly for my engine tear down because you can fit it basically anywhere in the entire engine. The only bolt on the entire truck is hasn't been able to do so far is the crankshaft bolt, but I didn't expect it to. I only had enough money for one gun and I figured that the number of times I'll actually need the high torque was limited, so I went for the majority use case.

 

[Deleted member 144409]

I can understand that. I've purchased and waited on a number of things (tools, lubricant to soak, etc) and hate to take it to the shop for this. I'm going to check with the tool rental place today. I'd actually never used the air socket I had sitting in my toolbox for 15 years until a couple weeks ago. Holy crap. What an idiot. That really would have helped on 15 years of projects. :-D

 

['round n' back again]

i use an IR cordless for 99 % of everything. when i first got it, i stopped by a truck shop where a friend was working . that gun spun the lug nuts off a log trailer right now.
recently another friend dropped by with his service truck. i borrowed his compact gun to get to my crank bolt.it was a fresh gun with huge psi behind it. i could feel the power in that gun and it was a napa compact,nothing special,- just new.
its got a bunch more kick than my IR which had faded some with age.

 

[coffeegoat]

Absolutely, the new guns are outrageous compared the the old stuff. I actually have a sub-compact, it's tiny, comparable in size to those new compact lithium ion 12V impact drivers, and it's an joy to use, so much power in such a small package, feels a bit wierd pulling lugnuts with something so small. However, when compared to a full size gun or even a normal compact it comes in just a bit under-powered. If I were to pick out a single gun again I would go for a more conventional compact, the increase in power for a marginal increase in size would be worth it, but for my first engine tear down I didn't want to get to a place were I couldn't easily get a breaker bar in and my gun didn't fit. Turns out there is plenty of room in the Montero engine bay and I needn't have worried.

 

[Deleted member 144409]

I rented the biggest impact gun the local tool shed had...700 ft/lbs. Borrowed my buddies bigger air tank (125 PSI, 2.5 CFM)...maybe not big enough. Heat/spray/cool/wrench/colorful metaphors. Nothing. The tool barely fit and it was still at an angle...but fortunately didn't jam the socket onto the bolt.

@coffeegoat - I couldn't find my induction coil. Must have sent it to GoodWill.
@round n back again - my awesome mechanic neighbor (think Lawrence from Office Space) moved 1.5 yrs ago. So, I have no mega tool connections.

Stopped by a shop I trust. He said they use the starter method when their biggest weapons don't work. Gah, that terrifies me.

Verifying the starter method:

1. Crankshaft pulley holder against frame.

Question: I can only get it to rest next to one of the air filter mounts which is on the wheel well. Good or get it on the frame rail somehow?

2. Disconnect distributor cap

3. Offer stock tape deck to the Automotive Gods.

4. Quick turn of key to Start.

Question: If I'm not quick enough, what price am I going to pay?

Thanks, again!

David (looking for the cajones to do this...)

 

[coffeegoat]

I've always wanted one of these.

That's not a very big impact wrench, I know it was the biggest one the rental place had, but you can find units that hit 1000 ft*lbs pretty easy, this might be a good time to use harbor freight's return policy