Main pulley removal.
 

Well im working on doing the front main seal. And i cant seem to get this thing off. The main bolt came off with out problems and then when i put the SST pulley puller on and started to pull of the pulley it got about 1/8th of an inch and it stopped. I figured i was hitting a rust ridge or something of the sort, so i bolted it back to operating position and spray the shit outta it with penitrating oil and tried it again to the same result. I tried just cranking the shit out of it and it actually started to turn the main bolt back in and left a pretty indentation on the bolt.

I may not be real clear on the problem your having ,but when I was pulling my balancer off ,the main bolt on the puller was threading into the crank and pretty soon I was turning the whole engine. I took the pointy bit off the bolt because of clearance issues and it took me a minute to figure out what was going wrong. Is that similar to your problem?

That's weird, my crank bolt was the b!tch and the pulley wasn't that hard.

When I removed mine, I didn't have to use the SST. I used a big flat head screwdriver and "walked" the pulley off. I got underneath the car and went from one "side" of the pulley to the other. It moves very slowly but it works. Took me about 30 minutes to get it off. You can check the progress by getting up and looking at the ridge that has the notch in it and seeing how far it has moved away from the lower timing cover.

Once it was off I put ARP moly lube on the bearing surface of the pulley and the crank nose. It slid right on and off by hand after that.

Well sort of. See i left the main bolt in but only threaded part way so i know it has room to go, i was checking on it. I called toyota like i said and they said i am doing it the correct way, and it should come right off.

See the previous owner of my car bought a jdm longblock and had it rebuilt by jasper perfomance in illinios. That was 30k miles ago. I should be having this much of an issue regardless.

Im just going to keep spraying penitrating oil on it. But the way its so tight just scares me. If all else ill take torche to it for a few second to see what that can do.

Does anyone recommend anything i havent already listed? I soaked the pulley last night in every direction with penitrating oil, so im hoping that this morning it will be a little more forgiving or im busting out the propane.

'fraid I haven't got a clue. The only time I've ever had difficulty is when I removed pullies with IHatehacks "walking" method. I would be leary of using a torch to heat it ,as you may damage the rubber seal on the balancer.

You should not be having this much trouble. I suspect, by what you just said, that the last person to take it off (whoever rebuilt it) didn't torque the crank bolt to 195 ft/lbs (which would explain why you didn't have a problem taking it off) and since then, from running the engine like that, the crank pulley started to "spin" on the woodruff key on the crank and now the part of the key that doesn't contact the pulley is catching on the pulley when you try to pull it off. Its hard to explain but it happens on many cars, on 89-95 SHO motors its called crank cancer.

If you ever do get it off I bet the woodruff key will be in 2 or 3 pieces.

If you can't take it off the way I did with a screwdriver, something is not right.

Yea what you said does make sense. And that would be the end result. And it really wasnt my idea to hit it with a torche for a few seconds, one of the service techs at toyota told me too. But he did say watch out for hitting the ballencer and the crank, dont get it too hot, just enough to make the metal expand a hair because thats all ill need.

Well if the key is sheared and stuck in the crank with the pulley half on it, how do i remove it????? The only thing i can think of it heat and alot of force, which might in turn end up killing my crank.... but that pulley would be done for ;)

Ok, well i got the pulley off tonight. It just took ALOT of force and it costed me the pulley puller that broke right when i got it off. Now i dont need to take off the front cover to do the main seal and oil pump seal do i? I should just have to take off the timing gear and i can work them off right? If thats the case i should be able to finish this project tomorrow.

The crank seal is right behind the crank timing sprocket (the cogged one that the timing belt goes on). The oil pump drive shaft seal is behind the oil pump drive gear. If the cover you are talking about is the aluminum lower timing cover then yea it has to come off. If you are talking about the inner timing case, no that does not have to come off (its a BITCH to take off anyways) but it makes replacing the seals alot easier.

The front crank seal is not that hard to replace, as long as you use the SST. If you don't have the SST then be careful not to scratch the crank or all this work will be done in vain. But the oil pump drive shaft seal is different. The TSRM says to cut off the lip of the oil seal with a knife and then tape a screwdriver and pry it out. There is no SST to remove the oil pump drive shaft seal. I've never replaced an oil pump drive shaft seal on these engines so good luck.

yea thats what i figured. I read the tsrm on all this. But it was a bit unclear as far as the lower timing cover and the front cover.

As far as the SST for the main seal goes. The oil pump drive shaft and the rear main seal both have the same method of removal. That with the knife and a tapped screwdriver tip. Since i already have both the main seal and the oil driveshaft seal, i can tell you they look no different besides diameter. So i see no reason, if im carefull, why i cant use the same method on the main seal. Ill probably use an Xacto-knife for the cutting making this process all the more easier and me less likely to apply to much force and slip.

ok well i got everything off, i went to pull off the oil pump pulley and the oil driveshaft seal literally fell off when i took the pulley off. So im thinking that was probably the leak. Im doing the front main anyway. I got a pic of what it looks like here, with out the main seal, and the new oil seal in.

Looks excellent. What are you using to install the seals?

The oil pump seal went in most of the way by hand, and the rest of the way i just tapped in with the butt of a screwdriver. That seal also came pre-greased. The front main didnt, so i need to pick up some mp grease and while im at the store i mine as well get something the same diameter as the front main to make installing less aggrivating and more successfull. After that its just reassembly, which im assuming will go together alot quicker then removal, especially with all the pulley trouble i had. Im going to try and smooth out the end of the crank a bit to make install a bit easier. When i pulled off the pulley some of it didnt go with the pulley, it decided to stick to the surface of the crank :dunno: .

I also purchased a turbo gasket set, and a exhaust manifold gastket. Once i run the engine with the new seals and see if my oil leak is gone, ill put the gasket set in because i noticed my exhaust manifold is leaking a bit, thus my boost(spooling) leak i was looking for. Alot of trouble iv been having with a engine that was just rebuilt by jasper about 30k miles ago. I didnt know the 30k mile warrenty they gave me meant "Hey we will cover you for 30k miles but after that its guarenteed to FUCK UP".

Wow, I never heard of that happening before (crank pulley) :outahere:

And as far as your exhaust manifold leak, I had the SAME exact problem with my car. In fact, I bought the car with the "leak" and I did the SAME exact thing you did, bought a turbo gasket set (because it has to come off) and bought an exhaust manifold gasket. When I pulled the exhaust manifold, turns out the last person to bolt it on overtorqued 3 of the nuts/studs and stripped out the aluminum threads in the head. I spent 4 days installing 3 10mm helicoils. I really hope your problem is just the gasket and not what I went through, but it sounds very similar to my problem. My car only made 4psi of boost with that "leak".

mine only makes about 5 lbs when its set to 9, and about 8-9 set to 12. Its a bad leak.

finished the seal replacement early saturday morning, only took about an hour to go back together haha. ALOT quicker than the tear down, usually how it goes :drool: . Anyways been driving it for about 2 days now, got on it a few times, seems the seal replacement did the trick. No way to tell really which seal it was that went bad, but im assuming it was the oil pump seal given how easy it came out compared to how difficult the new one was to install.

Overall difficulty = Easy if you have the correct tools

If you dont have the right tools you better have some damn close substitutes or this job becomes difficult. (aka SST's)