Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Has anyone removed the nut that holds the 56' harmonic balancer? I see there are special tools that hold the pulley in place to remove the nut for Chrysler and GM. My harmonic balancer has come apart and I need to remove it. Any help would be appreciated.

I used an air gun and the bolt came out easily. You can not use an ordinary three-jaw puller to remove the balancer after the bolt is out. The thin piece of sheetmetal surrounding the rubber will not stand the strain. A friend welded up a puller for me out of angle iron. Look at the picture of the puller in the shop manual. The jaws reach around the sheetmetal ring so that the force is being exerted against the cast balancer itself and not the ring surrounding the rubber. Examine the hub of the balancer carefully. Several owners have reported cracks in the balancer.
I can also recommend Damper Doc in California. Far more reasonable than other rebuilders. I had mine rebuilt there several years ago.
damperdoctor.com

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I'll ditto Mr. Berger's comments, except I used an electric impact gun to remove the nut. To reinstall, I packed the crank snout with dry ice and warmed the damper to ease installation.

Thanks for the quick reply.h It seemed so simple to just pull the thing off and now i'm stuck.

Greetings, All,

What am I missing here? I use a large multi-purpose three-jaw puller all the time on Packard V8 front dampers. The inner main pulley is cast iron and a part of the assembly. I have never damaged one yet. As long as your puller is sufficiently large for the jaws of the puller reach around and catch the back of outer ring of the damper and pull on it, essentially, this is the same way the factory puller works. It is pulling the balance ring against the cast iron pulley. The sheet metal pulley mentioned by Randy is a separate piece, removeable after the center bolt is out. Not really a big deal with a good puller.

thnx, jv.

Jack, I am not referring to the pulley that you can remove when the bolt is pulled out. I am referring to the sheetmetal behind the main pulley that several people tried to pull on and damaged it. It is the cover for the rubber that is vulcanized to the cast-iron balancer. Are you saying your three-jaw puller can securely grab the cast outer pulley and hold it while you pull? Mine would not maintain a grip and would slip off that main pulley. The Packard tool goes completely around the balancer and pulls on the cast-iron, NOT the sheetmetal that surrounds the rubber.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO element of the Harmaonic balancer that contains ANYTHING that resembles sheet metal IN ANY WAY. The OUTER ring of the harmonmic balancer is the Outer ring and it is a STEEL ring or billet ring or cast ring or forged ring. It is NOT sheet metal.

Jack. I've removed 3 or 4 of the Packard V8 balancers just like u do. BUT, the 3 or 4 i removed came off rather ez with minimal effort and i did NOT use an impact. Probably only required 60 to 70 ft-lbs of torque to turn the screw on my home made universal puller.

However, Randy Berger IS correct relative to the tool in the book. I've never seen the factory tool in person but a close look at the pic in the book looks like it is not pulling against the outer ring at all but has an additional step that grabs behind the ridge of the hub where the TIMING MARK notch is cut.

I see no problem in pulling on the outer ring IF no more than 60 or 70 poundes of torque are required. Even still, the outer ring sets with in about .010 of the pulley and the rubber ought to give that much.

The only problem with pulling on the outer ring is if the balancer is unually tite on the crank.

In some cases, harmonic balancers can be pryed off of the crank using two tire irons. I've done and seen it done. HOWEVER this only works when the balancers are not a real tite fit on the crank. Also one must be very careful about what opart of the engine is pryed against and a wooden block placed under the pry bar to keep it from damaging the fron cover.

I do NOT recommend the prybar method. But it does work when used JUDICOUSLY in SOME (meaning NOT all) cases.

The reason I had a tool made to pull on the CAST part was that I saw one damaged when trying to pull against the sheetmetal ring. It also puts undue stress on the rubber. The ring on mine had come loose from the rubber and was rotating against the timing mark which was the reason I had to remove it in the first place. You may not consider it sheetmetal but it is rather thin steel and as I said I saw one damaged by pulling on it. Fortunately my balancer was not cracked, but I exerted
considerable force in removing it. I ran a flap wheel inside it to clean it up before reinstalling it after getting it back
from Damper Doc. And I have never seen the Packard tool but it is obvious that they felt it should not be designed to pull on the ring and stress the rubber but pull on the backside of the cast iron.