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Hey Guys, a friend of mine had his minivan towed to my house yesterday. We are going to attempt a repair on it this weekend. They were driving on a local highway, heard a bang then it became too difficult to steer. When we looked the van over this evening we found a shredded serp. belt and the outer ring of the harmonic balancer completely busted off and separated from the rubber. We checked the other pulleys to see if any were seized
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I would agree with what you checked, A shredded serp belt usually means a siezed pully, since you found the crank pully blown apart I would say there lies your cause. Keep us posted on what you find
Thanks, never seen the outer ring completely separated from the rubber. I wonder if it was a faulty part. Also looked up under this van. everything that can leak “is”. Oil pan, tranny pan, power steering res. , valve covers, looks like small leak even from water pump. I also took another look at crank seal and seems a small amount of oil leaking there to. The van is bleeding out.
Driveway Al
+1 on the above posts.
You might want to consider using a high mileage oil that may help with the oil leaks. Also make sure they PCV system is functioning correcty.
Thanks, thats a good point about the pcv. Haven’t thought of that. Any other advice on the Balancer if anybody has had that happen to them. Rubber ring looks ok, maybe the glue just deteriorated.
Driveway Al
Quoted From DrivewayAl:
Thanks, never seen the outer ring completely separated from the rubber. I wonder if it was a faulty part. Also looked up under this van. everything that can leak “is”. Oil pan, tranny pan, power steering res. , valve covers, looks like small leak even from water pump. I also took another look at crank seal and seems a small amount of oil leaking there to. The van is bleeding out.
Driveway Al
Your mention of the oil leaks leads me to believe that the rubber parts of the balancer become oil saturated causing the rubber to deteriorate leading to the balancers failure. should consider addressing those leaks.
You have to be careful with any vibrations on the front of the engine as it can actually end up damaging the crank shaft, that’s the reason they call it a ‘harmonic balancer’ in the first place because it helps dampen the vibrations of the engine that are created by the ‘pulses’ created by the pistons as they go into their power stroke as a result the crank does not rotate smoothly but instead has a series of ‘pulses’ as it rotates. When this hits a certain ‘resonance’ it can cause stress on the hardened steal of the crank shaft and possibly cause it to break, seriously it has happened. I would recommend replacing those parts you mentioned and I’ll add a video link that might help you find any other problems with the serpentine belt drive system.
There’s one other thing that hasn’t been mentioned here. Has the alternator ever been replaced? I ask because the alternator is supposed to have an overrunning alternator decoupler (OAD) pulley on it and aftermarket alternators often have just a regular pulley. The OAD reduces pulses in the accessory system from the alternator going on and off– it allows the pulley to free-wheel in the non-drive direction and it is spring-loaded in the drive direction. If the OAD is stuck or if it is absent altogether, the pulses from the alternator will damage other accessory components like the water pump bearing or cause the belt to jump off. I’ve never heard of it blowing up a harmonic balancer, but it would certainly put more stress on that as with everything else.
Quoted From Rick:
There’s one other thing that hasn’t been mentioned here. Has the alternator ever been replaced? I ask because the alternator is supposed to have an overrunning alternator decoupler (OAD) pulley on it and aftermarket alternators often have just a regular pulley. The OAD reduces pulses in the accessory system from the alternator going on and off– it allows the pulley to free-wheel in the non-drive direction and it is spring-loaded in the drive direction. If the OAD is stuck or if it is absent altogether, the pulses from the alternator will damage other accessory components like the water pump bearing or cause the belt to jump off. I’ve never heard of it blowing up a harmonic balancer, but it would certainly put more stress on that as with everything else.
Thanks for sharing this with us.
If this OAD for this particular vehicle only?
It is on that generation and later of Chrysler minivans and it’s on some VW’s. I really don’t know beyond that, but it’s something to watch out for when changing an alternator or fixing an accessory drive problem.
Here’s a cool video that shows the difference between the different types of pulleys running on the same engine:
Quoted From Rick:
There’s one other thing that hasn’t been mentioned here. Has the alternator ever been replaced? I ask because the alternator is supposed to have an overrunning alternator decoupler (OAD) pulley on it and aftermarket alternators often have just a regular pulley. The OAD reduces pulses in the accessory system from the alternator going on and off– it allows the pulley to free-wheel in the non-drive direction and it is spring-loaded in the drive direction. If the OAD is stuck or if it is absent altogether, the pulses from the alternator will damage other accessory components like the water pump bearing or cause the belt to jump off. I’ve never heard of it blowing up a harmonic balancer, but it would certainly put more stress on that as with everything else.
Awesome I did not know this.
Quoted From Rick:
Here’s a cool video that shows the difference between the different types of pulleys running on the same engine:
Awesome link! Thanks for sharing!
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