crankshaft pulley removal

[scruffy1]

I'm in process of replacing the leaking timing cover gasket. Trying to remove crankshaft pulley from the vibration damper and finding the bolts are REALLY hard to turn. Feels like they are going through rubber. Is this normal? Don't want to break them off.

Thanks

 

[rurouni20xx]

well that bolt is usually torqued to somewhere around 100 or so foot lbs on the harmonic balancer, so its going to be pretty tough, personally id bust it loose w/ a 1/2 inch impact and torque it back. dont use the impact to retighten it as you can overtorque it like that and possibly put the harmonic on crooked and cause the pulley to wobble, use your torque wrench and torque it back to spec. if you dont have an impact or dont have room to do it just use the torque wrench and reverse it to break the bolts loose, something about how a torque wrench is made actually increases your leverage w/o having to use a breaker bar. the rubbery feel im not sure about, if your uncomfortable doing it yourself i recommend taking it to a shop and have them remove the pulley for you.

 

[scruffy1]

Thanks but I was having problems with the Pulley bolts not the vibration damper. I found one of the four bolts turned a bit easier than the rest and cranked it out using a breaker bar. Massive amounts of red thread lock. After that I figured I was ok to crank as hard as I could to back the rest out.

The vibration damper bolt came out easy. Used the breaker bar braced against the frame and tapped the starter to break it loose. Will probably need to take the truck down the corner garage to get them to torque to spec when I put it all together. I have a strap wrench that has served me well but I don't think It will be able to keep the pulley from turning while trying to put 100#s of torque to the bolt.

Tear down was today. Tomorrow is reassemble if the weather holds.

 

[rurouni20xx]

your welcome, id def look into a manual and make sure all the bolts were torqued properly so you dont have to worry about it again and/or lose bolts down the road. friend of mind changed his water pump and didnt torque the bolts, he found himself w/ a flat tire from the bolt that fell out of the water pump and the flat tire made him stop and see his coolant leak which stopped him from burning the engine up. that could have been a very costly mistake, wierd how that ended up happening tho...