'93 Accord Crankshaft pully came apart!?!

I am glad I stopped on my way home from work today when there was a clunking
noise and a smell of burning rubber/plastic! The outer ring of the larger
of the two belt pullies on the crankshaft pully came off and forced the A/C
belt off its smaller, front pully! (2.2L 4 cylinder) It looked like a
retread tire. The big belt was resting on a smooth inner part of the pully
and the ring with the grooves and the guides for the belt was sitting off to
the side. That has never happened to me before! Somehow the look of that
two-piece pully looks vaguely familiar - like something I saw years ago
somewhere, but the repair manual I have for the car just shows the pully as
a single-piece item. The car has 145,000 miles on it. Is this a common
occurrence on this engine? Sure, the car has a lot of miles, but one
doesn't expect this sort of thing. It is peculiar!

Anybody heard about any recalls or anything?
KWW

 

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You didn't mention how long ago it was done, but the person who did your
timing belt didn't tighten the bolt nearly tight enough. At least they
didn't use LockTiTe (which is a no-no).

Good thing you shut it down quickly. The key is probably lost, and
timing belt may be damaged. You need a good mechanic to look it over and
put it back together correctly.

'Curly'

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Crankshaft pulley has band of rubber between the hub and the grooves to reduce
harmonic vibration. In this case, the grooves separated from the hub. His only
course of action is to replace the whole pulley. This rarely happens. That's why
we don't hear much of it.

btw, lighten pulley usually has no band of rubber to isolate the grooves from the
hub. Vibration from the pulley would destroy the crankshaft bearings fast. That's
why we don't advocate using cheap lightened pulley.

 

Check for TSBs at
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/tsb/tsbsearch.cfm. IIRC the
problem is known, especially on Preludes of that era. The outer ring of
the pulley is separated from the inner hub by a bonded in rubber ring,
which is a harmonic damper to minimize crankshaft vibrations. One thing
which can do this kind of damage is using a belt type pulley holder when
trying to get the crankshaft pulley bolt off for timing belt replacement.
I guess if you had an A/C compressor which was binding somewhat it could do
similar damage, though you'd think the drivebelt would act as a
(sacrifical) safety link in the system. An oil leak wouldn't help either -
could rot the rubber.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

I am thinking of looking in some junk yards for a replacement pully. If I
found a later model Honda 2.2L motor, wouldn't that pully and bolt be the
same? Our '97 Odyssey engine looks identical except for the differently
configured timing belt cover.

It just so happened that I was 1/4 mile from a Honda dealer when the pully
went. They initially thought it would be $130 to fix it, but he obviously
looked up the wrong part. I got a call back later that the pully itself is
$250 and that the bolt holding it, the belts, and the timing belt cover
(which I saw had a slice in it from the main PTO belt) needed to be
replaced - and they wanted $750 for it. YEAH, RIGHT! (They said it was
about the same as what they had to do for a timing belt replacement.)

Well, when I had adjusted the valves recently I inspected the timing belt
and it looked fine. Although, with 145,000 miles on the car, and the front
end off the motor, I might as well replace the timing belt, balancer belt,
and water pump anyway. He mentioned that they would "inspect" the timing
and balancer belts, so, between that and the fact that he didn't mention it,
I would assume that the $750 didn't include these parts. That would bring
the price up closer to $1000!!!

Well, I guess I will venture into the task of replacing these two belts
too. I sort of wonder, if one carefully doesn't move the position of the
gears and quickly places the new balancer belt (and timing belts) onto the
car, can one get away with short cuts from the manual procedure? (Probably
not, right?)

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

Talk to to a salvage part retailer. The staffs are quite good. They'll know
which pulley would fit.

I've never change a timing belt on an engine with balance shaft, so I don't know
how easily it could be turned. On all timing belt jobs I did, I always checked
the alignment. It didn't matter if any of the parts moved or not.