on my 85 22re the harmonic balencer pulley fell off while driving, is there supposed to be a washer behind it before I bolt it back on? Its on now and when I try to crank it over it sounds just horrible like a dry well.

 

There should be a woodruff key that the pully slides onto. The bolt that holds it on has a huge washer built into it that puts a lot of pressure on the balencer. That bolt takes 116 ft/lbs of torque to crank down, so I would be figuring out how it came off. Hopefully your crank, where the bolt screws into, is not all striped...if so, I would be looking for a new engine.

With it coming off, your crank is now out of time and will need to be retimed. That is why it sounds like crap.

 

How does the balancer falling off affect cam timing or am I missing something?

 

I was wondering the same thing?

 

I'm kind of anxious to find out the answer to that as well. The crank gear for the timing chain also uses that woodruff key. The only thing the balancer does is balance the rotation of the crank. It takes care of the.... harmonics....

At least thats what I thought... I have re-installed balancers on various vehicles when they mysteriously came off, and they ran fine once re-installed...

So I want to hear where I am wrong.

 

If the woodruf key is gone, the crank has enough slack in it to spin the cam timing off. A broken woodruf key causes all sorts of problems.

 

that woodruff key isn't the same one as the timing set key. There are two there maybe three. I forget offhand. And there is 3 or 4 on the earlier engines.

A broken woodroof for the balancer will not affect the timing gear sprocket unless both keys are broken.