Engine Cant get harmonic balancer puller to work… crank just spins

So I tried removing the harmonic balancer now with the puller tool I rented and I’m kinda stuck. I setup the puller and it has a pointed tip at the end and once it got tight it just spun the engine. I put the car in gear and choked the front wheels and it still spun although now a lot harder and I could tell something wasn’t right so I went to take it out of gear and it was hard to take it out of gear and when I pushed the clutch a noise came from the tranny and then it came out of gear. The gears and clutch feel fine idk what happened there. I think I might have been dragging the flywheel against the clutch.

Am I doing something wrong why is the crank spinning? I had it set at TDC and now it’s all screwed up. Now I can’t even remove this thing to try again because it spins with the crank in reverse too. What should I do?

Bullitt347 said:

You need to use an impact gun. Doing it by hand is not going to work unless you can lock the engine from spinning. Usually this means using a tool that will go up against the flexplate/flywheel teeth to prevent rotation. There are a few ways to accomplish this. Some of it depends on access to the flesplate/flywheel teeth.

Click to expand...

Ok, I’ll pull the rad out and put an impact on it. The impact on the puller won’t damage the engine will it? All the videos I’ve seen people don’t mention having to lock up the engine on this step. I guess mine is just rusted on?

JD1964 said:

When you put it in gear and chocked the wheels, what gear did you put it in? 3rd would be better than 1st. A higher gear will have increased resistance to the vehicle wanting to roll forward as you put TQ on the crank snout.

Click to expand...

Yea it was in first, thanks for the tip I have it in third now. So unfortunately my big impact gun will not clear even with the rad out… I’ve been using the stubby and it just doesn’t have enough torque to move this thing. It’ll move the black screw just for a couple seconds and then after it gets overheated it’s done. I think I’m going to have to keep coming back to it, letting the stubby cool and giving it fresh batteries until I get this thing out. I went through this first battery and probably only got like a thread and a half of progress until the gun died. I got two more charging I’ll try again with those two batteries tonight and hopefully I can make some more progress