98 Malibu Crankshaft/camshaft sensor

I Needed a new harmonic balancer for my 1998 Malibu V6 3.1. My hubby changed it out and now my car dies if you let it idle. You have to be going or gas it to stay on with out dieing. Ok we took it to autozone and they read it with their machine it said it needed a camshaft sensor or crankshaft sensor. Sorry I can not remember which. My hubby swears he saw crankshaft but the guy said cam. OK my question is ...would these sensors make my car die while ideling. Or could the new harmonic balancer do this. I am really hopeing to have my car fixed this weekend. If you know anything about this please email me at [email protected]. Any help would greatly be appreciated!!

THank you !!

Amanda

The 24x crankshaft position sensor is right behind the harmonic balancer. There's a chance it was disturbed in some way when the harmonic balancer was changed. The computer uses the crank position sensors for ignition timing and to determine the engine speed. I would imagine that could throw things off a bit if false information is getting fed to the computer.

To check: (this will set a code, but the engine's already done that)
1. Make sure it's getting juice: pull off its connector and check for 12 volts across the red/white and the black wires with the key on.

2. Make sure it's doing its job: backprobe the light blue/black wire with the positive terminal of a voltmeter, connect the negative terminal to a good ground source. Rotate the engine with a breaker bar with the key on. The voltage should vary from 10 volts to nothing as the motor turns.


I haven't actually ever done these tests, just read about them so I hope the info is useful. If anyone spots something wrong or something I missed please chime in.

edit: there's another sensor somewhere on the firewall side of the engine, but I figured the one under the harmonic balancer was more likely the problem.

Thanks for the response! I hope that works. I will let you all know

Correction... The car only dies when you put it in gear. Its fine if you are going more then 20 mph its when you are at a red light or stoped with the car in gear that it dies.