Crank Pulley Wobble - more than meets the eye!
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:00 pm
So I decided to start working on my spare legacy. It had bad hesitation up to 3k rpm, and it would barely move in gear. I removed the crank pulley and this is what I found:

You can see that the crank pulley bolt had loosened up and the key ate away at the pulley. But wait, that's not all! I found that the key itself was twisted a little, and sticking out sort of sideways from the crank gear. I had to use a puller to get it off. Here's what it looks like:

You can see that the keyhole is a little chewed up.

Let's not forget about the crank!

And another shot for fun:

Last and least, this is what the key looks like after it had it's fun:

So that's it. Basically I'm hoping that I can weld a new key back into the crank and file it down so a new gear and pulley can be installed. Let this be a lesson to everyone - check your crank pulley bolt! Also, you may want to stay away from purchasing a suby with crank pulley wobble. This one cost me $500 bucks, and turned out to be slightly more serious than I anticipated.
Talking to the local subaru yard turns out that a bad crank pulley is a common problem, as they have a shelf full of replacements.
I've read the threads that already exist on this, and decided to document my progress with some pictures.

You can see that the crank pulley bolt had loosened up and the key ate away at the pulley. But wait, that's not all! I found that the key itself was twisted a little, and sticking out sort of sideways from the crank gear. I had to use a puller to get it off. Here's what it looks like:

You can see that the keyhole is a little chewed up.

Let's not forget about the crank!

And another shot for fun:

Last and least, this is what the key looks like after it had it's fun:

So that's it. Basically I'm hoping that I can weld a new key back into the crank and file it down so a new gear and pulley can be installed. Let this be a lesson to everyone - check your crank pulley bolt! Also, you may want to stay away from purchasing a suby with crank pulley wobble. This one cost me $500 bucks, and turned out to be slightly more serious than I anticipated.
Talking to the local subaru yard turns out that a bad crank pulley is a common problem, as they have a shelf full of replacements.

I've read the threads that already exist on this, and decided to document my progress with some pictures.