harmonic balancer went kaboom
Thread Starter
Teching In
Joined: Mar 2009
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harmonic balancer went kaboom while trying to get my stock pulley off i broke the lip, long story. anyways the chevy dealer couldnt get me one, most were extremely expensive and had to be ordered from far-away places. i went to autozone and they had a dorman balancer in stock for 64$. sweet! got it home, inspected it and it had a huge chunk of metal missing from it >.< went back and ordered a new one. waited 4 dayds and went to get hte new one and it had a small dent in it. since there was no material missing from the balancer i figured it would still be balanced and i had to get my DD back together.
i put it on, drove it for 5 minutes and it exploded. the potmetal outer shell broke into 6 or 7 pieces and flew off and obliterated my accessories. my belt tensioner snapped in half. electric fan smashed. water pump destroyed. every single pulley except for my alternator pulley completely destroyed. also pinched one of my metal A/C lines . the timing chain cover seems unharmed as well as the rest of the engine thank god. the metal core of the balancer is still firmly bolted in place to proper spec. i'm done with cheap autozone balancers needless to say
has this happened to anyone else, or has anyone ever heard of this happening?
i put it on, drove it for 5 minutes and it exploded. the potmetal outer shell broke into 6 or 7 pieces and flew off and obliterated my accessories. my belt tensioner snapped in half. electric fan smashed. water pump destroyed. every single pulley except for my alternator pulley completely destroyed. also pinched one of my metal A/C lines . the timing chain cover seems unharmed as well as the rest of the engine thank god. the metal core of the balancer is still firmly bolted in place to proper spec. i'm done with cheap autozone balancers needless to say
has this happened to anyone else, or has anyone ever heard of this happening?
Wow, that sucks. That's alot of damage caused by a cheap balancer. I only buy oil, cleaning supplies, and hardware type stuff from "the zone" for that reason. There parts are low priced junk. I know quite a few people that have spent more money in the long run messing with low quality parts, but your case is especially bad.
Thread Starter
Teching In
Joined: Mar 2009
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Good luck with that. When I was a parts store manager if we had a situation like this we would submit a claim to the manufacturer. They wouldn't even look at it unless the work was done by an ASE certified Tech/Shop and had all the reciepts and credentials to prove it. Then, 3 months later they would usually pay like 25% of the repair bill.
Also, if you noticed the part was damaged, slightly or not, and used it, that's just askin for it also.
I agree with above post, use quality parts, and you get what you pay for.
that really does blow that it did that much damage tho....
Last edited by 99blancoSS; Jun 15, 2009 at 01:42 PM. Reason: link
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Thread Starter
Teching In
Joined: Mar 2009
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update! i went to autozone with pictures of the damages and they replaced everything except the balancer of course, i pulled one off another trans am. over 400$ in parts. what a suprise. i guess they arent bad people after all!
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Hope everything works out for ya this time 
Joined: Aug 2007
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From: Turnin' Wrenches Infractions: 005
glad you got it fixed. Its a shame though bc lots of guys have perfectly good balancers sitting around collecting dust. Coulda saved yourself some headache.
Thread Starter
Teching In
Joined: Mar 2009
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yea, luckily my motor itself is untouched, the only damage it could possibly have is from driving it a 1/8 mile home with no balancer(just the metal core). the water pump soaked up most of the damage. but it was an orginal pump so i'm getting all new tensioners, idler pulleys, belts, and water pump for free. not to mention frost hooked me up with an OE balancer for 50 bucks so i saved some money on the balancer too!
