alright about lost my licence for 3 months and i had an oil leak from the timing cover thing so i pulled my engine apart decided to do my head aswell, so i took everything apart took my head down to get machined they said it would be a couple of weeks so i oiled up all exposed steel chucked a cloth over the motor and left it till i got my head back.
i got my head back on monday so i got back into it, i bought a 3pronged harmonic puller offerer and it wont come off! i gave up after 6 hours all up getting it off. i need help because i get my licence back in 2 weeks haha. what other ways are there to get the balancer off?

i also bought a cruise control module aswell, i have an ef falcon gli ive read the tut. a few times and it donst explain it well enough for me.
any help would be ace cheers fellers

a big mallet..... or keep trying with the puller

this might sound silly.
but you did undo the bolt in the centre of the balancer didnt you?? lol

otherwise do the puller up and tap the side of the balancer to shock it. then do the puller up tighter and tap it again.

i cant see why it wont come off??

be careful you dont strip the thread in the crank

a couple of big jimmy bars have always worked for me i used a hammer last time but i smashed the balancer luckily had no intentions of reusing it

You should leave the bolt in by 1 or 2 turns so that your harmonic balancer presses against that when pulling the ballancer off to not wreck the thread, just incase you didnt know

What I had to do to get that bolt un-done was get a long enough breaker bar, and rest it on the right side of the car's frame then get someone to turn the ignition for not even half a second just so that the starter motor turns the engine over which will un-do the bolt... snortingboost told me that idea on another forum and it worked well

Harmonic balancer puller should get it off if that bolt is off.

Use an electric heat gun to get the balancer nice and hot - it should come off much easier. Also do the same thing to fit it.

when doing this remove spark plug leads so the motor doesnt fire up. i learnt this one on the g/f's lancer. motor started pulley fell off and bent the key way on the crank.

Or pull the CRT LP fuse before you flick the starter.

OMFG!!! - DON'T go using the starter or any such thing for god's sake!! - try and be a little professional about it and use a heat gun as I've said. To brace the crankshaft against the undoing torque of your spanner/breaker bar, use a couple of decent quality bolts with the right thread to go thru 2 of the same holes you'll be using for the puller - make sure the bolts are engaged fully thru the holes (ie. couple of threads showing on backside) - best is to also have a nut wound on each and pull them tight against the face of the balancer - then you wedge a bar across ways between the bolts to provide opposing leverage.

The BEST way to loosen that bolt would be with a "rattle gun" - ie. air impact wrench - with rattle gun you can undo things like alternator pulley nuts (on the bench but I guess in situ would work too) without even having to hold the shaft - marvelous things for that type of job. Problem would be a. getting a rattle gun (ie. including compressed air supply) and possibly b. having room to use it unless you remove the radiator.

And to refit the balancer you again need to heat it - and we're talking pretty damned hot here - not enough to melt/burn the rubber but not far short of that (gloves are a fine idea for handling it then of course) - and it would even be worth throwing some ice into a plastic bag and resting that on the end of the shaft while you heat the balancer.

All the harmonic balancers I've removed require no heat.

A $15 extractor does it flawlessly, stuff messing around for 2 hours removing the rad, condenser and heating a block of steel with a hairdryer on steroids.

A swift hit with the hammer on a breaker bar should suffice, but honestly, the key system works very well and safety is the number one issue, so double think and prep up for all problems.

In the best of all worlds a swift tap on the bar SHOULD get the bolt to come loose - if not, then all I'm saying about that is brace it mechanically - DON'T use the starter!

I've done 3 balancers over the years - 2 on XF and one on my ED - and again I agree that a good puller should work fine with no dramas, but my ED really had me working hard until I heated it a tad and then it came easy as pie. And getting the new one onto the ED was shaping up as an absolute no show until I heated the living begibbers out of it at which it slid on very nicely. Maybe it wasn't made very well - or my ED's shaft is a tad oversize there as a mech shop that did the timing set a few years later made some cryptic comments about the ballancer being a bastard and taking about 3 hours alone to get off.

That shop subsequently fitted the tensioner housing - WHICH IS SEALED WITH A FREAKING O RING - with Blue Max silicon applied to the whole threaded section - AND got the timing out by one tooth - AND to this day it leaks oil from the head/timing cover seal - but I degress and that's all another story.......

Hi again.... I see all the usual suspects are in this thread - Krytox showing he's not only "edward soldering iron hands" and Snappage with his usual electrofreak knowledge giving us a way to stop engine spark without removing plugs.

** I HAVE AN OIL LEAK on my overheating EF **

Have de-greased the whole front of engine and found the likely culprit to be front crank seal. So - harmonic puller time for me this weekend. Cheers.

 

 

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