Not certain that this happened, but it's the only explanation of why my crank pulley decoupled from the crank. I don't exactly know when it occurred during my 35 mile drive to work, but I noticed a vibration and growling sound getting louder and louder -- I was thinking it was a bad engine mount -- and then on the way home that night, it went away. I thought it was a little odd that the sound would go away, but a short distance later, I noticed that the alternator light would light when coasting or at a stop, but would go out if I gave it a lot of throttle, similar to what happened to me last year when a siezed tensioner pulley caused the crank-alt belt to go. A few blocks from my house, I felt the power steering lose boost, so I was thinking that the alt belt had gotten caught and took the power steering belt with it.

Once at home, I took a look under the hood and found the power steering belt to be off the pulley up top, and the crank-alt belt to be hanging off the alternator, both still intact. Looking down to the crank, I noticed that the crank pulley was no longer lined up with the power steering pulley, nor was it aligned with the timing belt cover either. I could feel, without touching it, the crank pulley being smoking hot, so I decided to wait until daylight to see what's up. The next morning, I was able to grab the crank pulley and turn it by hand with the engine off, as well as being able to tilt it around. It took about 10 minutes of hitting it with a 3/4 inch IR 261 impact wrench at 125psi (rated at 900 lb-ft at 90psi!!!), and I finally broke the crank pulley bolt off, leaving about 1/4 of it inside the crank.

In any case the crank is junk for anything that uses any kind of crank pulley since the Woodruff key slot looks beveled on the trailing edge where the force is applied. The upper edge of the slot on the crank pulley is no longer straight and the hole where it fit on the crank is now about 1/4 inch larger than before. The crank pulley also ate into the timing belt cover, and it was beginning to come into contact with the timing belt on the exhaust side. I wonder if replacing the Woodruff for each timing belt change (every 50K for me, easy to remember) would have prevented this. I can think back in September when I put the blower back on (off for smog test) that the corner edges of the key were a little rounded, but not so much that I would consider it worn. A 97 CR-V timing belt that I did for a friend had a key that seemed a little more square edged, but again, it didn't seem that much more. I cannot compare this now since there is no sign of my old key.

Here are some stats on what I had:
97 GSR Stock Block 193K miles daily driver
JRSC for last 98K miles, last 80K miles at 10psi
Alaniz ported head with his recommended valve, spring, and retainer upgrade package
Hondata rev limit at 8400 rpm

Hope this doesn't happen to any of you. I'm thinking of sleeving and building it to 84.5mm, or just putting in another crank, sell the GSR, and then buying a CR-V (eventually will put a blower on that too). I need the space when I carry a lot of video and sound gear so this might be a good time.

Any of you guys heard of this happening?

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 23, 2004 02:24 AM: Message edited by: roadrunner ]</font>