Truly SAD! Another broken Harmonic Balancer!!

phils89sc

Registered User
I have searched through the archives and know that I am not the only one with this problem.

I was driving with my girlfriend to go to the store and all of a sudden the car just quit. I coasted to a stop in a side street. I tried starting it a few times, but she would just sputter and die. I popped the hood and saw nothing remarkable, and thought it may be a clogged fuel filter. Replaced it, still no help. I was under the hood and had my girlfriend crank the engine, that is when I saw the belt lose all tension, and the crank pulley/dampner fall forward.

I just got it home (I was about 10 miles away) and have not yet evaluated the total damage yet, but will soon. I have read plenty of posts on this topic on this forum. My engine has 230K miles on her, and this SH!% happens. You would think Ford would help out some here since this is definetly NOT an isolated incident and has happened to MANY SC's!!! What the fu#% is wrong with Ford?

So now I must spend the rest of this weekend and probably a few days next week fixing this design FLAW and lose a couple of days from work since this is my primary transport.

I already know that this may not help, but after all of this is done, I am going to box up my old and broken harmonic balancer and ship that piece of trash to Ford and tell them what I think of their corner cutting..... Anyone wish to join me?

Thanks

Phil Stocker
 
Don't mess around with a new stock replacement and go for the BHJ unit. You won't have any more problems in that area. There is a lot of stress going through that piece due to the supercharger. Could Ford have done a better job on the design of the dampener? Yeah, but hell you got 230k out of it, not that bad.
 
Oh no Phil don't do that! If Ford hears you got 230K out of it they'll make the next one suckyer! LOL

Vernon
 
The Ford assembly comes with a new pulley and is balanced for about $200. supercoupeperformance.com is selling BHJs so that you'll have to look up yourself, I don't know.

Vernon
 
i just bought a bhj balancer from supercoupeperformance and it cost me 350 but it looks a hell of alot better than the stock one and it looks like it is put togather alot better also. i would rather spend another 150 bucks and have one i know is made really well. but thats just my opinion.
Matt
 
With 230k on that balancer I would be jumping for joy. Really, I replaced mine with a BHJ as a precaution at 100k because the old one had a SLIGHT wobble.

If you have the money, go with the BHJ and under drive pulleys, otherwise buy the assembly from Ford. The new balancer from Ford has the Pulley attached so all you need to do is swap the sensor ring and install.
With the BHJ, you need to have the balancer honed to fit and the pulley balanced if you are not going with underdrive pulleys.

Remember, it is not just $150 more for the BHJ. You need to have it honed to fit the snout properly, about $30. Then you need to have a neutral balanced main pulley ($30-$50) or underdrive pulleys ($180-$200). So the BHJ becomes much more expensive, but you get what you pay for.


Aaron
 
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