I am looking at a car with a bad harmonic balancer, I have a few questions for you third gen guys,
A. Hard to change?
B. when it broke what are the chances of it causing major engine damage.

Thanks.

 

Our cars down have harmonic balancers. They are internally balanced. If it's a bad crank shaft pulley you might just consider getting an Underdrive Pulley, which will normally be $100-$115ish for a VE, plus new belts.

 

ok great thanks bro, for some reason the guy sellin it said the harmonic balancer was no good, if a ud pulley went could it cause damage to engine?

 

now where the hell do you get an UDP for 100-115? mrgone...i think you've gone crazy...

 

ok well than how much?
I already have a boosted 4th gen( see homepage for pics) and this will be my 4th Maxima, second 3rd gen

Just covering my back, i can get the car pretty cheap, it is an 89 se, auto, the guy says it needs a harmonic balancer, if we dont have these on our cars, he must mean ud pulley. now, so i dont end up with more headaches than i need, when this pulley went, could major engine damage have occured? if so what, and also what is a realistic price on a new pulley?

 

hopefully you caught it quickly enough you might have to change the crank

 

The only thing I'd caution against is the crank itself.

A friend of mine had an '87 200SX SE with the VG30 (hauled MoF'n a**).
His crank pulley fell off on the road. Upon closer inspection, the crank key ripped a big chunk out of the crank, so it would never hold a key for a pulley again. That car is gone away now. I'm not sure if the Maxima version of the VG has that same tendency.

 

yeah hopefulyl your worst case senerio is you might need a new woodruff key

 

www.rpmoutlet.com for the pulleys. VG's dont seem to get as good of a deal though

If it is just a bad 'harmonic balancer' then you can pick up the car cheap and it might not have anything wrong with it, but if it does have the same symptoms that would point to a bad harmonic balancer, you might want to find out whats actually causing the problems. You could be sitting on a cheap/easy fix, or on an absolute nightmare.

 

I have to remeber that site. It'll be useful when / If I finally get enough money together to really start modding.