I was checking under the hood and I noticed a very slight crank wobble. Never affected running . The harmonic balancer has 172k on it so I ordered a new one. It looked out of wack. I'm waiting on a crank holding tool,as I want to make sure the bolt is tight. My question is, should I just put the balancer on,as is? Wait to tighten the bolt? **** it all take the crank gear off to inspect the keyway. It's been together since the last timing belt for about 15k.

 

The balancer isn't retained by the main crank bolt with the 150ish ft-lb install torque. It's retained by the smaller bolts with the 10mm head that are torqued to about 15 ft-lbs. Start by checking the torque on those, and maybe replacing them. It's easy to overtorque and stretch those bolts.

 

The first thing I did was check the torque on the upgraded pulley bolts. I'm a terrible mechanic. Does anybody know if I can take the crank pulley and snout out, to look at the keyway, without actually messing with the keyway or timing gear? I'm waiting for the FM crank tool and hate looking at the Frog on jackstands.

 

So, this a basic and rudimentary answer, but...

The crank pulley / damper is held onto the crank timing belt sprocket with four small bolts.

The timing belt sprocket is held onto the crankshaft with one large central bolt, and a key.

Assuming the four small bolts are properly tightened (and this is easy to verify externally without dismantling anything), then any wobble in the pulley is going to tend to be due to a loose fit between the timing gear cog and the crankshaft.

However, also bear in mind that the OEM crank pulley isn't a single piece. It's two pieces of metal with a rubber piece in between them. On my '90, as one example, the inner and outer halves of the crank pulley moved relative to one another. Not so much that you could see it in real-time, but enough that the timing marks on the outer portion of the pulley tended to slip over time. In order to accurately set the timing on that car, you first had to mark the "present-day" TDC on the pulley by pulling a spark plug and finding TDC the old-fashioned way with a stick down the hole.

 

My crank tool came today. The crank bolt wasn't torqued tight, so I took the bolt and snout off to check the keyway. I can see a couple thousandths of an inch, in between the crank and keyway. I'm thinking about getting one of those crank savers. I had a friend that, along with the locktite fix has had no issues. Has anybody here had any experience with one?
The keyway looks tight in the timing gear. Should I get a new one, to be sure?

 

I would replace the key just to be safe, and get a new crank bolt as well. They're cheap insurance for an expensive problem. Inspect the timing gear and crank for any visible damage / marring in the keyway. If all is well, Blue Loctite the crank bolt and make sure it's cranked down to spec.

 

Maybe I'm overly concerned, but I ordered, OEM, timing gear and pulley boss and one of those crank savers. The damn things all come from china, so two week wait.
Since the gap on the keyway is so small I'm using Loctite 243, which is removable.
Not changing belt or seals. They only have about 10k on them. Once I get the parts, I'll post how it fits/works.

 

Put in a new key, and new crank bolt. Tighten it down to spec, use locktight if you want. You will most likely be fine. I had a similar thing happen to me n 2008/2009. Crank bolt had just come slightly loose, or maybe it was the 4 small bolts. I freaked out thinking my crank was going to be bad and the world was ending, as I have done many of times. **** was was fine and the crank lasted through several other motor failures.

 

******* crank saver is lost in post office hell. I finished taking it apart and the crank was fine. The key had some rounding on the corners. I put all new OEM parts, torqued to 125 with blue Loctite. No wobble and runs better than before.

 

That must have been a scary feeling when finding that out.. Glad there's no actual harm done.

 

Like I said in a previous post, I put it together using all new OEM ****. Damn thing still has a slight wobble. I torqued everything with a good torque wrench, using blue Loctite. I don't know what to do. Is any wobble acceptable, or will it eventually cause my oil pump to fail? Any advice?

 

Camera bounce was more noticeable than pully wobble.
The picture of the crank snout looks OK besides the missing chunk of housing from 10-12 o'clock.
Someone removed the front crank seal the hard way...

One thing no one's touched on yet is checking crank shaft end play.
I don't know which motor is in your car (some years had more trouble with this issue 99-2001 ish).
Car off, try to push the balancer into the motor. I use a pry bar between the balancer and the sway bar.
While watching the balancer have a helper depress the clutch pedal.
Normal end play is around .006 and that much movement is very hard to see. You think "Did I actually see that move, maybe I did".
If you have an endplay problem you will see the movement easily. I've seen as much as a quarter inch (Toyota R22 with dropped thrust bearings).
You might be seeing a thrust bearing issue instead of true pully wobble.

The wobble in your video did not look bad too me but a closer video with a solid camera mount would tell me more.

I'd check the endplay like I suggested before I did anything else to the car.
A true end play check does exactly what I advised but with a dial indicator taking measurements from the crank nose.
This could be done in the car but everything within 16" of the front pulley would have to be removed.

 

My NB had a bit of a wobble. This thing got driven HARD for almost 200k miles and it was never an issue.

 

Wow! That's effed up. Because of my trigger plate, I don't even think my car would run with a wobble that bad.
I'm not going to obsess over it. My 1970's damaged brain will just find something else to perplex me.