Crankshaft Pulley

Today I went out to start my car (92 SI)and there was this loud rattling by the driver side wheel. I'm thinking the axle is gone, but I get out to check and my power steering belt is trashed and off and my outter pulley(alternator and AC) is bouncing around. Without any tools I got the outter pulley pressed back onto the inner pulley and drove it home without power steering. My question is what made this happen and how hard is it to put a new crank pulley on. I talked to my neighbor who is a mechanic. He said I would probably have to remove the driver side engine mount and drop the engine down a few inches and get to it. I know I'll need a harmonic balancer but I'm pretty sure my neighbor has that. He also has a lift in his garage so I figure I can pull this off without taking it to someone. I found the pulley for $132 on some OEM honda parts store online. Still not sure how this happened but whatever. Any help is appriciated.

Today I went out to start my car (92 SI)and there was this loud rattling by the driver side wheel. I'm thinking the axle is gone, but I get out to check and my power steering belt is trashed and off and my outter pulley(alternator and AC) is bouncing around. Without any tools I got the outter pulley pressed back onto the inner pulley and drove it home without power steering. My question is what made this happen and how hard is it to put a new crank pulley on. I talked to my neighbor who is a mechanic. He said I would probably have to remove the driver side engine mount and drop the engine down a few inches and get to it. I know I'll need a harmonic balancer but I'm pretty sure my neighbor has that. He also has a lift in his garage so I figure I can pull this off without taking it to someone. I found the pulley for $132 on some OEM honda parts store online. Still not sure how this happened but whatever. Any help is appriciated.

My brother had a similar thing happen to his Probe. His air conditioning compressor seized and caused his belt to come off. It probably is comparing apples to oranges but hopefully it helps. It is a good thing you have such a nice neighbor.

Yeah my neighbor is great. He has a huge garage with a paint booth and everything you could ever need. Only problem is he runs a classic car club and doesn't know a whole lot about 4 cylinder imports. But he always knows someone who knows everything that he doesn't, and he knows where to get any part at discount prices. He's awesome I'm going to have him paint my car this summer. Anyways, has anyone fixed this problem or does any one know if it's possible. I'm trying to avoid pulling the motor out but I'll do it if I have to.

you can get the pully off without dropping the mount out. Like poorluder said check all the pulleys first to make sure they aren't seized. Then check the harmonic balancer and see if the rubber hasn't seperated and cause the pulley to walk off from the center.

None of the pulley's are seized because I have the car running now. The rubber is gone. I actually had the outter pulley slide off and taken off the car completely. Then I put it back on and put the belt back on. It works and if I don't use my AC the belt turns my alternator. The pulley did walk off the center and thats why I need a new one. Right now I am just checking the pulley every time I stop the car and centering it if it needs to be. It has been working I have run the car a few times since I started this. I don't have another car to drive and my neighbor said that even if it did come off it wouldn't do any damage I would just have to pull over real quick and put it back on before my battery runs dead.

The exact same thing happened to my Prelude two weeks ago - my crank pulley was wobbling so badly it was grinding against the crank speed sensor, which started throwing out codes and made the car stop running. The pin that holds the pulley to the crank was missing and pin slot on the pulley was badly chipped. I found out this happened because the previous owner had changed the timing belt but left out a small spacer that goes on the crank before any of the pulleys. When he put the pulleys back on they were slightly off alignment, and after a few thousand miles of driving it like that the pin broke and the pulley started wobbling. After all this was repaired I looked at the old power steering belt and noticed that it showed a lot of wear from the stress.

Off topic:
I used this opportunity to install an Unorthodox underdrive pulley kit (crank, power steering and alternator) - gains are pretty good, I really notice an improvement in acceleration and throttle response. I'd recommend it - I know people blame their engine problems on aftermarket pulleys because they don't have a dampener, but I haven't had any problems with the pulleys I've installed on my CRX - and those pulleys have 20,000 miles on them.

Thanks for the info. Did you replace the pulley yourself, and if so how did you pull it off. I also thought about getting under drive pulley's but I have an amp for my component speakers and plan on putting my 10's in soon, so I don't want to take power away from the alternator. Once I do all that I'm just hoping I don't have to get a HO alternator. But back to topic how did you remove the pulley, there doesn't seem to be enough room to get a socket in there and more importantly pull the pulley off.

You gotta remove the drivers side wheel and wheel well shroud...also had to use a huge breaker bar to loosen the crank pulley. My engine is an H22, I'm not sure if it's going to be the same for an H23. Here's a link for installation instructions for the Unorthodox H23 pulley. The first few steps say how to remove the pulley...

http://www.unorthodoxracing.com/install/Ultra%20SS/04060120_.pdf

Thanks alot Gohan Ryu. You helped me out alot. Thanks man.

This might help you out a bit.

http://www.ntpog.org/reviews/underdrive/pulley.shtml

knowing this, why would someone make a pulley kit that doesnt have a weight/balancer on it? youd think they cared a bit more about the consumer

I'm still not convinced that guys bearing problems can be blamed directly on the pulley - I've heard too many other people say they've had no problem, and I'm one of them.

valid point....
im pretty sure i will avoid anything that might possibly hurt the car since i want it to last a while

Like he said, Prelude pulleys don't have a harmonic balancer in them because of the balancer shafts unlike his friend's car. So we shouldn't have any problems.

Now that I think about it, I remember looking at my old pulley very closely - the thing was solid metal, no internal dampener or balancer.

Mine had a balancer and my replacement did too. Maybe it's just on the h23's, anyways. I got the thing fixed. I did everything I could to get it lose but couldn't do it. I took it to my neighbor and he almost couldn't get it off with his 175psi compressor and impact gun, but he did it for me. I was kind of looking forward to fixing it myself. But somethings I just can't do with what I have. I got it fixed and it's back to normal. Thanks for everyone's input.

I'm seriously thinking about getting a light weight pulley set. I think Unorthidox Racing is the only company that makes them with the crank pulley.