Broken vibration damper on V-8

Posted by Craig Hendrickson On 2013/11/18 18:13:06

For the last few weeks I heard an intermittent rattling sound coming from the front of the engine in my 55 Pat. This occurred at idle or slightly off idle. It was frustrating because I couldn't locate it exactly. I checked the usual suspects: fan, water pump, generator and PS pump, but they were all tight and noiseless. Finally the noise got really pretty loud and when I looked at the harmonic balancer ring on the snout of crank right behind the pulleys, it was wobbling!

Now that I found out the problem, what to do? I had a spare good used harmonic balancer (Packard calls it a vibration damper) on a 55 352 V-8 that I was using for the header fitment on the bare Panther chassis, so that was no problem. The service manual shows a 3-part factory puller tool (J-5992-1,2,3), so I decided to modify a general purpose 2 or 3 prong puller for the job. To do this removal in the car, of course you have to remove the gen and PS drive belts and the fan and its pulley. I didn't want to drain and remove the radiator, so I had to modify the puller to fit in the existing space. Here's what I ended up with:



The part you can't see is the mimic of the J-5992-2 center adapter which I assembled out of 5/16 bolt & nut and a 3/8 deepwell socket and some duct tape:









Here's a closeup of the missing rubber ring on the broken balancer (vibration damper):



Here's a closeup of the intact rubber ring on the cleaned up and painted used balancer (vibration damper):



Total cost of repair: ZERO. Damage done to the engine due to broken balancer (vibration damper): none discernible.

Craig