Did I Hurt My Motor?

Ok, so I went to a friend's house to a small get-together. He wanted to go for a ride in my car; I just pulled up and it's already warm, so ok, off we go. (I'll do my best to recreate what happened).

*smacks the gas in 1st gear*
*grins and giggles like a girl when it goes a little sideways*
*grin widens and giggles get louder when it shifts to 2nd, still smoking the tires*
*car shifts to third after it hooks up*
*BANG!*
*lets off the gas immediately*
*WHAABAAMMMALLLLAMMM*
"WHAT THE **** WAS THAT?"
*sees a small amount of sparks in the driver side mirror*
"HOLY **** THAT CAN'T BE GOOD"
*turns the car around and limp it the 1/2 mile back to my friend's house where it's going to sit until I get it fixed*

Everything seemed fine, other than it only making 1-2 pounds of boost. Oil pressure was good; coolant temp was good; good charge; etc.

When we got back, we looked for 10 minutes for what had happened. Everything seemed fine, but we could not see anything. I turned on the AC and the belt made a horrendous squeal. Then I saw it. (and immediately cut the car off).

The harmonic balancer had flown apart. Can you believe that?!? You know how there is a rubber piece in the middle of it? Well, the entire outer piece that the belt rides on was GONE. That hitting the ground must have been the sparks I saw. Only the smaller, inner, smooth piece of metal was left. That's what was squealing and why the blower wasn't making boost (no grip from the crankshaft).

My question is: did I screw anything up internally via the the whole event and driving it for a minute without the balancer? I certainly hope not, but I've heard of oil pump failure due to faulty balancers.

Also, is an OEM replacement balancer from a store like O'Reilly like this one work fine? Or do I need to spend part of an arm and most of a leg on one from a dealership?

Thanks guys. Hope you have had a great New Years. I certainly have, regardless of this little mishap.

Oh, and I'll post pics of the carnage tomorrow when we find the part that flew off.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find the other piece in the ditch. We looked for half an hour, but had no luck.

SRT Handz said:

Funny that you bring this up because I saw this same exact thing coming.

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Well actually, I saw it ahead of time as well. A few weeks back when I was cleaning up my engine, I saw a little small piece of that rubber gone from the balancer. It wasn't as bad as this picture:



but it was a small piece missing. I could tell it was a little rotten, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Guess I should have.

Long story short, You car is probably fine, all you need to do is go to NAPA and get a new crank pulley. Get the OEM replacement one from NAPA, its the best. Trust me, I am handz and you bought my Blower

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Yea, from doing some more reading, most people are saying that this doesn't cause a problem unless you keep driving it or running it really hard. The car has probably ran for less than 2 minutes after this ordeal happened.

I ordered that same pulley from Advance Auto because I had a $20 off coupon. Supposed to be here in the morning.

You are teh handz, I did buy your blower, and I be loving it. Thanks for the help.


Also, being that I do have a blower that's putting a good amount of extra torsion on the crankshaft and balancer, would it be worth it to spend the money on a 1-piece fluid balancer? I have a good friend that does a lot of racing, and says that that's all they run on their cars. Is it worth the extra money on a 325 hp, 7 pounds of boost, street car?

SRT Handz said:

update?

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Sorry about the lack of an update. I've been at the beach all week with no internet.

Got the pulley, got it on on Sunday, everything's all good. I didn't realize how bad the old one was wobbling until I saw how much smoother the new one was. I guess I know now, because the old one was BAD.

I've got a picture of the two of them side by side, I'll get it up later on.