Surefire

Hello Everyone,

I had a couple of questions I was hoping yall could help out with, and also I wanted to share my experience so far regarding a harmonic balancer issue.

I purchased a 2005 Corvette with roughly 39k miles last year in June. I purchased the vehicle with a Vehicle One warranty offered through the dealership. Since the purchase, I have brought the odometer up to about 65k miles. Unfortunately, around January I began to experience an issue where my serpentine belt started to make noise. I replaced the belt, but the replacement shredded itself. I replaced it a second time, thinking I miss-aligned the belt, but once again it shredded. I took it to the dealership where they diagnosed that the Harmonic balancer was a bit unbalanced. Under the warranty, they replaced the balancer and the belt. The tech afterwords mentioned - this part is a bit hazy since it was 6 months ago - that there was a shim that seemed to be in there, but it was either out of place, or shouldn't have been in there at all.

Fast forward 6 months, and while driving through a parking lot I notice a thwapping sound. I open the hood and sure enough, the dealer installed belt is shredding badly. Before this point, there was no indication of belt failure - I had changed the oil recently and didn't notice anything off about it. I also did not hear any squealing which would indicate it was wearing poorly. I assumed that somehow the belt had jumped which caused the immediate failure.

It is now at the dealership. They said that the balancer is unbalanced and has moved by roughly half an inch. They also said that the crankshaft is unbalanced as well. They are waiting to hear back from GM on how to proceed given the situation. They also mentioned that they would contact the vehicle one warranty service to have them come out and do a claim if they do need to tear down the engine to perform service on the crankshaft.

My questions are:
1. The vehicle had a cold air intake and an axle back exhaust system installed when I purchased the vehicle and warranty, will the warranty company use this as way to deny payment should the engine need to be opened?

2. If the Crankshaft does need to be worked on, which is the worst case scenario, what other issues does this open me up to in the long run - additional reliability issues, loss of power, etc.

3. Given that the vehicle was taken to the dealership for replacement of this part 6 months ago, shouldn't the repairs be covered by the dealership that did the work? I don't particularly want to pay a warranty deductable on a failed install. I am also kinda angry if the failed install took half the engine with it.

4. If you were in my position, how would you proceed? At this point, I am waiting for them to give me the final word on what all is wrong with the engine and how GM wants to move forward.

Thanks for your help,
-Surefire

tennblkc6

don't think anything is wrong with the crank... probably just needs an aftermarket balancer installed which should have occurred when the stock one gave up.
good luck with it.

EVRose

I don't see how the crank could be unbalanced. I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say when they put the balancer on the first time they didn't use the proper installation tool and stripped the threads in the crank. That made the balancer come loose and they realize the hole is stripped so the crank needs to come out. Again, this is just a wild guess but it is a possibility. They should be responsible for all repairs from here on if that's what happened.

AORoads

ahh, the old "using the improper tool for install/removal" gambit! yes, it does happen. didn't we see a thread about a month ago where someone was showing the proper tool and that many/most don't use it since it seems "easy" to remove and install the HB? to the OP, I hope the dealer realizes what may have happened. if you can find the thread on here, it might be good to print it out and at least have it in your back pocket to share w. the dealer svce. mgr. good luck and tell us how it all turns out.

Found something that may be of interest to OP: See posts #13, and then #29 with a vid.

here: http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c6-c...nightmare.html

EVRose

Yep, that's exactly the thread I was thinking about when I read this one.

07_C6_WPB

Did they put a new stock LS2 balancer on the first time you brought it in?