Car Fix DIY Videos

Harmonic Balancer Bolt Removal Saturn Vue 3.5 Honda Motor

Mechanically Declined to Mechanically Inclined Rating of 7.

Our Saturn Vue has almost 250k miles on it, I’ve replaced the timing belt twice already and this involved removing the harmonic balancer each time. Each time, I looked at it to see if it needed to be replaced as well. While it did have some cracks in the rubber isolator I didn’t think it was bad enough to need replacement. Well it needed it. It decided to fail about 5000 miles after the last timing belt change. More on deciding when to replace this part later in this video.

So letting the car cool overnight, I put it up on a jack and stack of ramp blocks, and removed the right front wheel. The next thing to remove is the cover at the bottom of the inner fender, this protects the serpentine belt and the oil filter. It’s held on by these push pin rivets, just pry out the center pin and the rivet will come out, keep them together so they can be reused.

After that remove the serpentine belt. To even get to the belt you have to remove the air cleaner housing, this is held on by 1 bolt and 1 clamp and don’t forget to disconnect the sensor in the corner. The belt is held in place by the tensioner, I used an offset box wrench on the bolt and a cheater pipe on the end to make it easier to hold the wrench in place while I removed the belt.

Use Caution. If the wrench slips the belt can tension instantly, keep fingers from between the pulleys and the belt.

With the belt out of the way I could now remove the bolt holding the harmonic balancer in place. This bolt is very tight and the motor turns when you turn the bolt. This is how you turn the motor manually. So to remove this bolt there are 3 options. One use the special 50 mm hex wrench to hold the harmonic balancer in place while turning the bolt with a 19 mm socket. Two use a powerful air impact wrench to remove the bolt. Or three let the motor do the work to remove the bolt.

I chose three as it’s easiest when you work alone but requires that you have good tools and a clear work area. To use this method position the wrench against the front suspension lower arm. A cheater pipe may be required if your wrench doesn’t reach all the way securely. With the socket sitting fully on the bolt and everything clear of the swing of the wrench, get in the car and bump the starter. It may take one or two bumps but this will loosen the bolt and it can then be removed by hand.

After removing the bolt, the harmonic balancer normally just slips off the crank. In this case though the outer ring came off first, showing just how badly this part failed. But the rest came off after that.

Now you can see what happened to the balancer. The rubber isolation had failed from age and heat. Then the outer ring slid on the rubber finally sliding off the rubber and then the belt slipped down onto the rubber isolator. The outer ring was just barely hanging on, and with just a tug it came off completely.

Now while putting it back together is just reverse of taking it apart, there are a few things that I would like to point out.

The new harmonic balancer should slide on to the crank without much resistance, this one is a little stiff. This means that when I go back to remove it next time it will be stiff coming off and may need a pulling tool.

The torque for the center bolt, is 181 ft lbs according to several sources, to get to this torque you need either a very large air impact tool or a way to hold the balancer in place while you crank on it. This is where I use the 50 mm hex tool. Holding the tool for one person is a challenge but the same tools that I used to remove the bolt can be used to hold the hex tool then cranking on the bolt with a torque wrench.

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