another approach to Crank Pulley removal

[JedCoop]

So I embarked on replacing the chain guides on my '92 Q at 188K miles. - better late than never! With the help of this forum many things went very smoothly - liked when I finally turned the key to start the car it was all primed, it started up like normal :-)

However I did diverge from the advice I found here for removing the crankshaft bolt and the crank pulley. After reading/seeing some bad experiences I envisioned a crankshaft pulley with nasty sharp teeth (think Python) in my engine compartment.

Removing the crank pulley

I was about to put bolts into the crank pulley to remove it like they do at Infiniti shops, but I didn't have the right sized bolts. Within 7 minutes of deciding to improvise I had the pulley off with no stress or strain! I used the two lever tools pictured below to push the crank pulley out from behind.

I put one under at the bottom and one at the top, end then "bounced" the levers apart with minimal force. When two bounces occurred at exactly the same time I saw the pulley gently nudge forward. So I kept doing this until it slid off quite gently.

The tools I have are some older Snap-on tools and may not be so common, but they worked great!

(Since my imgaes are uploaded and I don't know how to put more than one of them per post, I'll continue this in my reply

-Eric

[JedCoop]

Now for the crank pulley bolt!

To get the crank pulley bolt off I decided to use stainless steel cable wrapped around the pulley. At first I used only one cable, but it felt too stretchy. If you figure it is 300 ft-lbs of torque, and the pulley is about a 4" radius, that means 900 pounds of stress on the cable. So I used two cables, one in each direction. Here is a picture of the setup as I was tightening the crank pulley bolt.

One of the cables was 1/8" thick, and the other was 3/16" thick. They did not harm any of the grooves in the pulley either. The cables wrapped around each other to hold on to the pulley. The thinner cable seemed to really grip inside the narrow grooves, but the thicker cable kept the pulley from moving very far under the torque. I also just wrapped the "loose" ends of the cables around the the structural member enough times and then tucked the end underneath. Once loosened, the steel wires half self removed themselves.

[DAEDALUS]

Glad it worked for you Jed, but I'm pretty wary. There's no chance of damaging the front cover casting by prying against it?

Cable wrap is sweet!

[JedCoop]

One last learning from the process. In my reading I never found out why you should leave the crank pulley at TDC prior to opening up the timing cover if you are just changing guides, not chains. Once the cover was off I found the tension side of the passenger side chain was loose - this was because a valve spring was pushing one of the camshafts to rotate while the other camshaft had resistence to turning.

And the crankshaft did not have any such torque. This makes keeping the chain from jumping a sprocket more difficult, and made inserting the passenger side chain tensioner much more difficult.

Again, thanks to the forum for the pictures, laundry lists of instructions and advice.

-Eric

[JedCoop]

Glad it worked for you Jed, but I'm pretty wary. There's no chance of damaging the front cover casting by prying against it?

I hardly used any force. So many posts mentioned that the pulley slipped off easily once they got started. The bottom lever was actually against the edge of the oil pan. The upper against a reinforced spot. I never felt like I forced anything.

[Q451990]

So how did your old guides look? Just cracked, or broken into peices? Were you able to get all of the peices out?

Glad to hear of another successful guide job!

Heath

[elwesso]

Excellent.. I always thought about that, i figured there had to be an easier way to get it off......

Most important part is getting it off straight.....

[JedCoop]

So how did your old guides look? Just cracked, or broken into peices? Were you able to get all of the peices out?

Driver's side in pieces, passenger side in good shape.One chunk was resting on the oil pump chain which had eaten well into it. Must have been there for a while.

My oil pan fishing skills are very poor. I am still missing two chunks.

I inspected the oil pump and saw no scoaring.When I primed the oil pump before putting it all together it pumped plenty of oil, still need to check oil pressure for sure.

Still wondering about the pull-the-pan issue.

[911/Q45]

Review the picture of Tangalora's oil pickup, then decide about the oil pan removal!

[FarFetched]

USE AIR TOLLS I BUST LOOSE BIG PINION NUTS WITH AIR GUN. NOT A SINGLE COMPLAINT FROM A NUT!dONT BE AFFRAID TO USE AIR TOOLS, SAVE YOUR KNUCKLES!