Hey everyone-

I'm looking for some advice from some of the more experienced mechanics/tool jockies in the forum.

This week I noticed that the harmonic dampener in my crank pully must be going bad because the pully has developed an extremly bad vibration. (it looks like about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of displacment when the engine is running) I've tried grabing the pully and moving it up and down but I didn't notice or feel any play in it, so I figure the main crank bearing is still ok.

It's also time for a timing belt replacement so I figured that I'd take care of everything that typically goes with that too.

My question is this, what else would a Subaru Tech replace along with the timing belt. I was told that with the high miles I have (206,000mi) that I should strongly consider replacing the H2O pump and all of the front oil seals (crank, cam, and the oil pump seals). Is there anything else that I should keep my eyes open for? I plan on hanging onto this car for another 100,000 miles (or at least a couple more years) so I want to be as detailed as possible in this repair (I don't want to have to dive back into the front of the engine just because I forgot something small that I could've or should've replaced now). Is there anything else (besides replacing the crank seal) that I should look at considering that the crank pully has gone bad?

I havn't replaced seals before, so are there any installation suggestions or pit falls that I should watch out for? I've only got a Chilton's manual to go off of. Are there any good online resources that I should look for or that anyone could direct me too (ie repair guides, or other general subaru maintenance forums)?

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

later,
D.
__________________________________
1995 Impreza L
1.8L, A/T, 2dr, FWD
206,000mi and counting... ... ...

 

on most cars, the water pump is attached to the timing belt so it make sense to replace the water pump along with it

 

GREAT LINK!
This looks like just the sort of info that I was looking for.

Thanks,

Derek.

 

So, I thought that I'd share with everyone my progress thus far.

I had started this work thinking that the crankpully's harmonic dampener was shot and simply needed to be replaced. But once I put a wrench on the crank bolt and felt how easily the bolt broke free, I knew it was more then just a worn pully.

Once the bolt was out, I flipped the pully over and realized that that crank bolt must have worked loose because the woodruff key in the crankshaft had stripped away most of the metal from inside of the pully. The only reason my accesories still ran was becasue the key and the pully and managed to wedge themselves together. The key and the pully both needed to be replaced. I checked the crankshaft to see how much wear this had all caused and found about 5/1000th of an inch missing on the last 1/4 inch of the crank. At this point I'm freaking out becasue I figure that the whole engine is going to need to be rebuilt.

I put everything aside for a while and talked to a few people about the shaft. Most suggested that I just replace the belts, key, and pully, get the thing running and then dump it onto someone else. Then I talked with the farmer who rents me the flat that I live in. He suggested a product from Loctite that he uses on pullys when they refuse to stay in place on his equipment. I took a quick look through a Grainger catalog and found some green Loctite 620 that looked perfect. So, I bought some of that along with some blue loctite for the crank pully bolt.

I began the installation this morning, starting with the timing belt install. And I'll let you take a wild guess as to what the first dumb thing I did was? Yeah, I stripped out the threads trying to reinstall the tensioner pully. Thank god for Heli-Coils. Of course, I'm pretty sure the hardware store raped me on the $60 price for the M10x1.25 helicoil set that I needed, but at least I got in installed (BTW, the aluminum is so soft, I didn't even bother drilling the hole out as the helicoil documents suggest, I just ran the tap in with a littel etra oil and everything went in fine). So, with the timing belt finally in place, I put my covers on and put some green loctite on the shaft and inside the pully, installed the crank bolt with some blue loctite and torqued it all to spec (chilton's said 69-76ft-lbs). I didn't put the rest of the belts on for fear that the tension of the belts on the pully would effect the loctite as it set up.

I'm going to let it sit overnight now, so I know that it's good and soild. Tomorrow will be the big test when I crank it over for the first time and see if I have any vibrations coming from that new pully.

wish me luck,

 

Success!

She cranked over without any problems and I didn't notice any odd vibration. I drove it to work this morning (a 35 mi @ 75mph commute) and didn't notice any problems.

Thanks again for the links to the guides.

Later,
D.