removing harmonic balancer, 04 lasabre

sorry i wasnt clear...it is a 3800 with a 24mm bolt which wont budge. once the bolt is out, the h.b. "should" slide off...according to haynes

peter

Hi Peter:

Despite the advise previously given, put your wrench on the nut, and run it against the frame or the floor. Then quickly bump the starter to break the nut. Gently. Don't crank the sucker. It's just a bump. You'll need to use an alignment jig to replace the sensor. You can try it by gosh and by golly, but you stand a good chance of shearing the sensor.

All of that said - you are screwing up pretty big here. Read the damned codes man. Why in the world would you want to jump into changing out parts without first looking to see what is wrong? There is a pretty good chance you are barking up the wrong tree here. Do yourself a favor and check the codes first, and progress through this methodically.

The bolt gets stuck on pretty good after a few years. Do like Mike said and wedge the breaker and a pipe onto the car. And buy, rent, borrow the alignment tool. The crank sensor usually does not go bad before 10 years. And then they tend to be intermittent for a few months first. Heat gets to them eventually.

A good air impact running at 120 psi will do it. Baring that, rent a 3/4" impact wrench and crank up the psi as high as you can get it and still be safe. 90 psi won't remove that bolt.

so the engine rotates clockwise, (as looking at it from the wheel well)? i understand the issue with the sensor fins....

yes this is to try to get the car running so i can get it to a shop to extract the stored codes to procede from there. thois shop will read the codes for free but i can not tow the car there.

strangely enough, the "service engine" does not stay on so the cheap readers would not work. here in ct, it would probably be $90 usd for diagnosis fee just to read the codes, plus tow fee plus repair, plus...

i take your point and i appreciate your saying this, really.

i am going to give this one more shot before making plans to tow the car...

thanks, peter

from where?

this is the first mechanical issue for this car so i cant be too pissy about it. it will be resolved one way or the other today.

i have a campbell, 25 gallon compressor which goes to 125#, with a craftsman gun, (didnt work), so i borrowed a ingessol/rand 650# gun, still didnt work. i was told there is an adjustment on the compressorr to briefly increase the psi, but i dont see one and i am not sure that is a good idea...

details to follow...

thanks, peter