Hello all,

I have a 93 Dakota with the 5.2 that my boss gave me last year and all has been well for a while. Today I began hearing a rattling sound when I was driving home and stopped to check it out. This is what I found. https://youtu.be/3KC2Ic0XoaE When I look at a replacement harmonic balancer, I see the center is keyed from end to end. Can anyone help me identify what is broken / separated?

 

It's a little hard to tell from the short length of the video and the restricted view. I would think you could get another balancer from the salvage yard. Be sure to use the proper puller though. I haven't seen them just fail very often but if you use a three jaw puller, you'll pull it apart.

 

I wouldn't use a boneyard balancer, unless it looked bran'spankin' new.

A SFI (race ready) rated balancer is under $100 at RockAuto as I type this - non-SFI balancers down to $50.

And at the age of our trucks, the rubber portion is failing on them, causing the balancer to spin.

Consider a repair sleeve while you've got it open, to keep it from leaking right there. Or replace the front crank seal, again to make sure you don't end up with an oil leak.

(At this age, if you have the money and the time, I'd HIGHLY consider doing the timing chain and gears ... )

RwP

 

HB is one of those things that isn't worth it in the used market unless there's no other alternative or the price of new as astronomical.

You will typically expend more time (and money) in your effort to replace with used (in this case) than you will if you just purchase a new one, install it, and be done with it.

Steve

 

Thank's for all of the replies! I would definitely be using a new one if it is the cause. I was just hoping someone would confirm my theory that it is a broken balancer. The truck has well over 250k on it and I don't want to waste time tearing it apart, only to junk it because of a more serious failure. I cannot find a good diagram of the rotating assembly to verify that there isn't something else that could have broken, or worked it's way loose.

 

What kind of diagram are you looking for?

The 95 and 96 FSMs have exploded diagrams of the motors.

However, it looks like the balancer snout is bouncing in and out. There's ... not much up there, save the crank, and if it were broken, the whole pulley would be bouncing in and out!

I'm surprised it's not tossing a metric boatload of oil out of it from how it looks in that 3 second clip/

Easiest way would be to pull the current balancer and see if it comes out in one piece or not.

But.

At this age, the rubber between the sections is failing, so it's not a bad call to replace it anyway.

RwP

 

front crank seal a definite while it is apart... but being as how the surface of the balancer and not the crank itself, rides on that seal, absolutely NO need for a seal sleeve. he will have a brand new surface for that seal to seal against by virtue of replacing the balancer

 

Hence the "OR" here ...

Either OR, not both.

Also, sometimes the seal won't ride right on a new balancer. I do both seal AND balancer.

RwP

 

IDK a solution I just wanted to confirm that everyone is seeing what I do in that vid. There is something like a collar on the shaft of ??? a wheel I cannot tell if the belt is going around it but that collar thing seems like its traveling back and forth and is probably the source of that noise. Take off the belt, fan and fan shroud to get at it and see what it is. The wheel looks fine cannot imagine what that collar thingy is. I just went to look. can't see anything down there on my 94 3.9

Just looked at Rock Auto I think looking at these pics will give you an idea what is going on. I don;t think it is any worse than it appears to be. https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/...+balancer,5512