I feel stupid even asking. Nine weeks ago I embarked on a two-or-three-weekend simple project to replace the camshaft seals on 1996 GLE with 218k and the infamous oil leak.

In that time I have not managed even to remove the crank pulley.

Ratchet with crank held? No.
Breaker bar with starter? No, but I now have small divots in the concrete in my garage from where the breaker bar has whacked the floor.
Breaker bar with crank held? No. I was able to flex the breaker bar a solid 40 degrees.
Portable impact wrench? No.
120v impact wrench? No.
Electric impact wrench with WD-40? No.
Air wrench? No.
Air wrench with PB Blaster? No.
Propane torch on bolt followed by air wrench? No.

What does it take? I keep buying tools and the cost of doing this with my "free" labor is headed toward the cost of taking it to a mechanic, and I haven't even gotten the front timing chain cover loose yet.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Marty

 

Quality impact socket and breaker bar with a longer pipe on it for better leverage. If the starter with a fully charged battery doesnt work you will have to lock the flywheel and do it manually. The longer the pipe the easier it will be.

 

Thanks for the reply. What's the best way to lock the flywheel? Given the torque involved, I am afraid of mangling the ring gear.

 

try not to chip the flywheel as well.

 

I don't advise you to lock the flywheel. You are not dealing with car that can take this much pressure through the flywheel. Besides, you would have to take starter out. And what if you strip the ring gear? You would have to lower the transmission to fix that.

I would try super class air impact wrench - either 3/4 of 1/2" that delivers least 600lb+ torque. Or you can wrap the pulley with a chain wrench and sit it against the ground. When put a socket, breaker bar with 6' extension (I use metal black pipe) and turn

 

you might try driving the car around a bit to warm it up to operating temp first. get thermal expansion working for you as much as possible (since it's not easy to get a torch on the crank).

when I did mine I used a serious impact wrench (IR2135TI), an impact socket, and a serious air compressor (we had two 200 gallon tanks and two serious compressors feeding them) and we had it cranked up to like 150psi and it still took a significant amount of time with the impact. it was a number of years ago now so i don't remember exactly, but I'm thinking on the order of 3-5 minutes of actual impact usage to get the thing to break loose. it really didn't seem to be making any progress but my boss at the time was like "just keep going" and sure enough he was right, it did eventually break loose.

 

Replace my pully about a week ago with the help of a strap wrench to hold the pully while you break the bolt with a breaker bar. It takes alot of force to get the bolt moving but it will.

 

Advance auto parts has a tool for that about 18 bucks called harmonic balancer puller

 

That tool doesn't help with getting the bolt out of the crankshaft, I've used it before for a person's car I did work on.

 

I used my half inch breaker bar with a three foot cheater pipe on it and locked the flywheel in three place with a special tool i made on a lathe. I thought i was going to break my breaker bar when I was doing it.

 

I can't believe how difficult that bolt was. I finally got it last night with several minutes of a MAPP torch until the bolt had a faint glow followed immediately by an air wrench for 20 seconds or so.

I have no idea if I cooked anything (front seal maybe?) as a result of dumping that much heat into the front of the crank. When the bolt came out it was smoking.

 

The crank pulley has a rubber center section. Make sure you didnt over heat it. There have been plenty of failed pullies on here.

 

I'd replace the seal while you're in there. It is definitely possible that you damaged/shortened the life of the rubber dampening portion of the crank pulley, and original cranks pulleys on these cars are starting to fail left and right anyways (I've had two fail on two different 4th gens in the last 4 years or so). That said, a new crank pulley is not cheap... and a used one might have been compromised in the same way. I personally don't trust the aftermarket all metal ones.

 

Mine failed at 149k. Took out my belts on my 95 maxi. The way I got it off was with a half inch breaker bar with a 2 foot helper pipe. With a 19mm impact socket, with the breaker bar facing forward I couple taps of the starter did the trick. Hardest part was getting first belt on that runs power steering pump, just plain difficult to get to bolts to loosen pump went with the walk it on method with a ratchet back on the crank, walk and ratchet went right on. Probably not the best for the belt but whole job done in an hour.

 

Just to make sure, we are doing lefty loosey right? From it sounds, the last person that torqued down the crank pulley over torqued it. By A LOT.

 

impact and thats about it. There is another way but I wont describe it here

 

I've done this method several times. Works great.

 

A strap wrench works wonders. Think of a oil filter wrench except it uses a strap. That's what I used.

 

 

I did the Tourch on the bolt for a few and then either breaker bar or impact gun..but my motor was out of the car..

 

I took mine to a friend's body shop and they had it off in under 2 seconds... but it was also a low-miles engine

 

2x w/ a harbor freight breaker bar and a 3ft gas pipe from home depot ("Black Betty" incase for you guys who've seen me use it)
-Used a screwdriver + a auto flex plate to hold the flywheel still. NOTE: I have ruined a flex plate and a flywheel doing this.

4x w/ an impact for a good while (Air and Electric)

1x using the starter method.

The only time I've done it w/ the motor in the car is the starter method, the rest of the times I've went "oops I shoulda done that w/ everything connected"

 

This whole procedure was the only thing that prevented me from doing a seal, water and oil pump replacement when I put the old 3.0 back in. I kinda wish it was still out the car I used a torch and impact, and I was really afraid that all the hammering and heat was damaging the main bearing so I quit, it even started rounding off the bolt

 

I just changed my crank pulley yesterday. dry rot was the culprit. BP blaster and electric impact gun. Just hold the impact on the bolt for about a minute. It will slowly get that bolt off. Make sure the impact gun can handle 250 lb/torque.

 

Um yeah..you're a douche bag..or have zero experience with the subject matter...hard to pull the balancer with a puller if you dont even have the bolt off yet!!

 

Your first post on the board and you're acting like a jerk already.
BTW, you bumped a 6 year old thread. Well done.

 

^^^^ Wizard, after months, I'm still trying to download that virus......

 

LOL @The Wizard

 

It was such an assanieing comment I had to jump on the "8 year old thread" ...hello, captain obvious!! That was the whole point!

 

And let me guess, it bothered you so much, that you felt compelled to spend the time to create an account, just so you could post what you did. Do you feel better now? U mad bro?

 

Clearly this person isn't going to be a constructive member of this community. Can't you just delete his comment and ban him?

 

Just remember his name.

Wait till he needs our help with something serious.

The Sound of Silence and Crickets come to mind.

 

Stellar guy:

https://www.facebook.com/mixmasterbjb

I was especially impressed with his academic achievements (worthless Liberal Arts major, probably didn't graduate, see: Sarcasm) and personal bio in the "About Brent" section.