So, I'm doing my front main and cam seals...

[frosho]

...and found that my crank is cancerous.

When I put a ratchet on the crank bolt, it was barely torqued at all. Probably only as much as the pulley's resistance could muster on it. I've never touched it before either, this is the work of the last guy who removed it.





My pics from other angles came out blurry so I'll take some more later. Relative to the position it's pictured in, the firewall side of the crank has a slight gouge in it and the underside looks slightly worn in general. Both the dampener pulleys and the timing sprocket still required pullers to remove though. It seemed like a decently tight interference, to me at least, and the woodruff key looks to be in decent shape. Do you think I caught it in time, and what can I do short of machining the crank (and obviously cranking the **** out of the bolt when I put it back on) to combat the wear?

 

[techi14]

locktite? damn I don't even know what I would do. It don't look too bad though.

 

[Mad Celt]

need that 3.0 I have?

 

[93rev2sev]

Does not look like the key has started moving...you might be ok...remove the key, clean everything up and red loc-tite the key back into place.

Use tape to mask the crank. You don't want to get loc-tite on the crank's surface...just the keyway.

 

[frosho]

How exactly do I remove the key? Pry it out? Never dealt with one before.

 

[SASHO91]

Yep. Small flat-head, and tap it up.

And I agree with everyone else.. Seems as if you caught it in time, if you didn't you would have most likely been able to remove the damper without a puller.

 

[93rev2sev]

Notice the tiger-striping where the timing gear was...

Those would be smudged pretty bad if the gear had started walking.

 

[frosho]

Yeah, on the underside that striping is somewhat worn off. I'm gonna go grab some loc-tite right now so I can hopefully finish up the rest of my engine work while I have some light outside.

On a side note, my engine looks even more similar to yours now SASHO lol. Just did the valve covers the same blue color and the upper timing belt covers are next on the list once I clean (and superglue, heh, woops ) them up.

 

[SASHO91]

Cool!