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Harmonic Balancer failure on wife's 07

tarafied1

tarafied1

Well-Known Member
The wife and I made a road trip from Western KY to Eastern KY for the weekend. We both drove our Mustangs to a big car show/cruise. They had a drive to the Cumberland Falls with lots of twisty roads, drag racing, a show and cruising on the strip. It was Hotter than Heck. I worried almost all weekend about the 67 having some catastrophe. It actually did great. On Sunday morning, wife and I fired up our rides to head home and her 07 was making a weird belt squeak. Popped the hood and harmonic balancer was wobbling. I figured it was a dealer part so we risked the drive. It was a three hour drive home. I followed her to watch for parts flying out from under the car. Well we made it home.
I pulled the belt and the balancer came a prt in my hands! Fortunately I have one son that works at Advance Auto and another that works at Auto Zone. I was able to get the part and at a discount.
The car only has 67,000 miles on it. Very strange part to fail...IMG_5613.JPG IMG_5663.jpg IMG_5664.jpg
 
Tell her stop racing that thing!

That is a weird part to fail on a newer car.

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That's a strange part to fail on any car. Never had to replace one on any car. Ever.
 
While you're at it to may as well build a bigger engine for her.

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yeah, it is weird. I have "spun" one on a 5.0 that I revved a lot. But never seen one come apart like that. It is the crank trigger too.
 
Starting to see a bit of harmonic balancer failures. Mostly on Kia's and Hyundai's but have done a few Dodge ones also. The only ford one I've done was for the CPS ring coming loose.
 
Is that balancer made of metal? Almost looks like a plastic degradation failure.
 
It's metal with a rubber layer between the ring and the hub/crank trigger. I don't know how we made it 3 hours driving either. I fully expected it to fly off. The only thing I can imagine was that the serpentine belt tensioner kept enough load on it that the belt tracking kept it from walking off or slipping. I don't know how long it would have gone though. I could see it wobble and then settle down, then wobble again, over and over just while it was idling. The rubber part stayed attached to the inside of the ring/pulley but separated from the hub. The tension from the spring loaded belt tensioner must have provided enough tension for the ring to grip the hub but I ma sure at some point the load of the water pump and and alternator would have overcome the grip and it would slip and not drive the belt anymore. Then it would have probably made a lot of noise and smoke and so on
 
This prompted me to do a bit of research and from what I found this is a very rare occurrence. While failures do happen they are usually the fault of an issue in the vulcanization process (rubber bonding to steel). This typically happens very early in use not tens of thousands of miles later. Very strange.
 
I actually stock about 60 part numbers of balancers in store . I believe the
quality of the rubber is the same as harbor freight rubber ....
 
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