Pulling the Harmonic Balancer, Order Parts and Buy bolts.

Lets Try That Again.

First thing Thursday morning I cleaned up all the threads in all the holes and on all three bolts for the puller. I figured I would try one more time to pull what is left of the balancer.  As I was tightening the bolts the stripped one would not even tighten. I took puller off the engine and decided that I would need to drill out that one hole and rethread it for a larger bolt.

Order Parts.

I Tried Smothers Parts.

Around 10:00 Patti took off on some errands and I went to see about parts.
I was told that Smothers Auto Parts was the best place to look for parts like the Balancer as they had a large selection of parts and a large network from which to draw parts.
They had the Balancer on their computer but could not find any in the real world.

I Went to our Local Napa Store.

The counter guy, looked the Balancer up on their computer and said that he could have it here in the morning.
Now that’s a parts store!
I also ordered a seal and gasket set for the timing cover in case I have to pull it.

On the way home I stopped at the hardware store and purchased two 3/8-24X2” and 0ne 7/16-20X2” bolts. The two new 3/8 bolts will replace two of the ones for the puller and the 7/16 bolt will be the third bolt on the puller.

Drilling the Hole.

I was concerned about drilling out the hole in the Balancer that is stripped because there isn’t much room behind the Balancer and I was concerned about accidently punching a hole in the timing cover.

I selected four drills  as I wanted to increase the size of the hole in small steps.

Below are the drill bits and the tap.

The two smaller drills were too small so I ended up using a 3/8 followed by the 25/64.
I managed to drill the hole without blowing a hole in the cover.

Tapping the Hole.

Next I had to tap the hole.

Pull the Balancer.

In order to use the larger bolt on the puller I had to file one of the slots a little larger. It’s the slot on the right.

I hooked up the puller and pulled the rest of the Balancer off with out a problem.

Pulling the Seal.

I wasn’t sure if the timing cover had to be removed to pull the seal or not.  After cleaning the dirt and grease from the area I noticed the metal ring around the seal.
I decided that I could pull the seal from without.
I took a small punch and made a small hole in the edge of the metal ring then I used a slide hammer with a sheet metal screw affixed to the end.  I screwed the screw into the small hole and with a few slams of the slide the seal came right out.

Below is the seal removed, the slide hammer and the punch.

Okay that’s as far as I got on this project today. I get the parts tomorrow and hopefully finish this up.