I just bout my wife a 95 5.0 Gt the engine starts up just fine and its not missing that i can tell but the motor shakes real bad what could it be harmonic balancer? i have had one crack on me on my old 5.0 what should i do?
If in doubt, change it immediately.
A bad balancer can and will ruin an engine. Don't drive it again or even start it.
A new ford balancer is only like $65-$85 bucks.
If it shakes with the car in neutral, likely it is the balancer.
I have a balancer laying in my shop its new i will throw it on there but if thats not it i would like to have a check list of what it could be i changed the oil in it drove it to walmart and back 5miles and its doing this now
Well, it's pretty simple actually.
If it does it with the car in neutral and parked, it's the flywheel forward.
If it does it while the car is in motion only, it's the trans backwards.
I've had the balancer shake, it's rather violent and destructive to the engine, even if it doesn't kill the engine immediately, a bad balanacer can start an engines demise.
The balancer should really fall under routine maintainance.
Make sure the one you have laying around is the correct balancer and try it out.
With a puller it should only take about 20 minutes.
Do you have a spark tool? Check to see that all the igntion wires are firing, the firing order is correct and then all the spark plugs are in good condition.
If all that checks out, pull a plug wire one at a time and see if the way the engine runs changes. It should. If it doesn't, then it's a good sign that cylinder is not firing and your injector could be clogged or other. Of course, if that was true, the spark plug on that cylinder would give it away before even needing to do that.