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My Harmonic Balancer has a wobble and makes a noticeable noise. I also noticed some ware on the edge of the my alternator a/c belt when I pulled it off. Iv been looking dealing with this issue for about a year now and I decided to come back and see what I can do about it.
This is on my 1998 honda accord 2.3L VTEC. The video below shows my problem that I am having. Click on the word video below to view it.
Any insight on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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Honestly, I’m not seeing anything that resembles a wobble. These things are always a tight precision fit on the crankshaft.
Did you torque the bolt fully? If the torque wrench rotates the engine before full torque is reached, remove the #1 spark plug and feed a few inches of nylon rope into the combustion chamber. Then use the balancer bolt to rotate the crank forward until the rope blocks the piston and crank from moving any further. Torque the balancer bolt fully, then rotate the crank backwards a bit to withdraw the rope.
Yeah I afraid that people would have a hard time seeing anything in the video. I had a full torque on the crank bolt of 181 foot pounds. I also used the tool for holding the HB in place while torquing it down.
I would be concerned about the play more than the visible wobbling (which doesn’t look too bad on the video). Honda spec for crankshaft end-play is 0.004″ (0.10mm) to 0.014″ (0.35mm) and the service limit is 0.018″ (0.45mm). It looked there was more than 1/2 millimeter of play, which could indicate worn crankshaft bearings, especially the thrust bearings.
Perhaps it’s not the balancer that’s the issue. If you have a manual transmission, it might be thrust bearings.
Keep us posted.
I am having a similar problem on 98 accord 2.3l VTEC with 180,000 miles, and my car has been well maintained and runs perfectly except for a wobbling harmonic balancer. The harmonic balancer was replaced with an aftermarket balancer, which made no difference in the wobble. The pulleys don’t make any noise, but there is some wear appearing on the outside of drive-belts. My car is an automatic, so I don’t know how it is possible for my thrust bearings to be worn out, as that seems to be a problem exclusive to manuals. We have used a dial indicator on the outside of the lower main pulley on the balancer and there didn’t appear to be much runout, however when placing the dial indicator on the end of the balancer bolt and pulling and pushing by hand the crank in out of the block horizontally, the runout was about .040” which seems to be way out of spec. It should be noted that the wobbling only appears at idle, and once the rpm gets over 1500 rpm it seems to go away. Anything possible thoughts on what may be the problem or what other tests we should.
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