I'm working on a cam swap for my Gen V L87 long block. I've run into a wall trying to remove the harmonic balancer (crank shaft pulley).

I can't get any size 3-jaw puller to work and non of the LS1 pullers will work either. Attached are pictures of the balancer

GM has probably come up with another special tool for this balancer. Or does anyone here have any ideas on what works? I've spent hours trying to come up with a puller that works for this application

 

This is what the backside of the balancer looks like. There are 3 equally spaced notches cast into the hub.

 

I've never worked on an L87, but the L83 balancer should be the same, and I've pulled my share of those balancers off.

I used a parts-store 3-jaw harmonic balancer puller (think Mitsubishi), and if I'm not mistaken, I had to make/ cut a small spacer to go inside the crank to work with the supplied spacer rod to pull it off.

I can tell you that I DID NOT use any fancy GM Kent-Moore tool.

Oh, and I used a "Long reach" installation tool from NAPA to put it back on.

 

The L83 balancers have a small pulley that is part of the casting that is located behind the large pulley. This small pulley drives the air conditioning compressor and is easy to grab onto with a 3-jaw coupler. On the L87, there is no smaller pulley to grab onto.

Sometimes I really hate being a pioneer when it comes to working on this engine. There's so little information available on the internet when it comes to this engine.

 

I finally got it figured out. I had to MacGyver together a combination of a small 2-ton 3 jaw puller with a LS1-style puller.

Thank God for O'Reilly Auto's tool loaner program. This is what I used from their tool loaner program:

 

I attached the 3 jaw puller onto the backside of the balancer. There are 3 small, equally spaced indentations cast into the backside of the balancer that each jaw of the puller fits into. A larger puller will not work; it won't fit inside the balancer. I used a combination of a rod and the ram from the LS-style puller to bottom out inside the crankshaft. The 3-jaw puller pushed against this make-shift assembly.

 

And now there is another vital piece of information on the interweb for these L87 engines. Hopefully, the next guy find this information and won't have to spend hours trying to perform a 5-minute job.

 

Good work. Thanks for the pictures.

 

That is the same as an LS truck balancer.

 

It is not. I have several tools that work great on LS balancers (including OEM 6667, OEM 25264 and some other cheaper imitations), they do not work on the 2019+ L84/L87/L8T balancer. So far I haven't found a good part number for a tool for these newer ones. Fortunately all the ones I have worked on so far were low mileage engines that didn't take much effort to get off, so I was able to get them using non-ideal pullers.

Yes I know this is an old thread, but lots of people find threads like this when searching on Google.