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Anyone ever had this problem ? I have a 95 Impreza 1.8 and thought it may have a slight rod knock. I noticed when I turn the air on the noise is gone. When car is running and I look down at the crank pully it looks like it has a slight wobble to it. I turned it off and grabed pully and I cant shake it or get it to move. I know the man I bought car from said it had a crank seal replaced not long ago. Could he have put the pully on wrong some how? And why would it sound fine with the air on , and how can you tell if its a rod knock or not ? Engine has 155,000 on it and it won't blow up when I do 65mph,not yet at least. Need some answers. Thanks

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I will say, that if the previous owner of your car did the same thing as the previous owner of my car, you might be a little bit angry........

 

the PO of my car replaced _SOMETHING_ he didn't even remember what, but it required removal of crank pulley. anyway, I later found out that he had not tightened the bolt down that holds the crank pulley on, and it had been spinning loose.....

 

wwwellllllll..... inside the round inner hold of this pulley is a square "keyway." there is also a square "keyway" in the end of your crank. if the crank pulley is not properly torqued down, it can "wobble" as you say, and cause the square metal key in this keyway to... well... wear out the metal in the keyway, allowing your crank pulley to merely slip around on the crankshaft. this is bad. if it fails you'll lose alternator (charging) water pump (cooling) a/c (cooling!) and maybe even some other stuff like power steering and whathaveyou....

 

I would most definately suggest getting it fixed ASAP

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wwwellllllll..... inside the round inner hold of this pulley is a square "keyway." there is also a square "keyway" in the end of your crank. if the crank pulley is not properly torqued down, it can "wobble" as you say, and cause the square metal key in this keyway to... well... wear out the metal in the keyway, allowing your crank pulley to merely slip around on the crankshaft. this is bad.

 

I just got my first Subaru as a result of exactly this problem. The crank pulley on my Geo Prizm started hitting the front of the engine. Took the belts off and found the threads on the attaching bolt were completely gone. Fretted away after the keyway slipped. Had the car towed to the shop and repaired. Cost me ~$1100 and the car is now up for sale. Didn't really want to fix it but it wasn't worth dirt without a running engine.

 

Don't drive it at all--if it gets really bad you can lose timing and clash the valves. Have it towed to a mechanic and get it fixed.

 

mikkl

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another possibility is that some crank pulleys are really two piece pulleys. there is a metal inner and outer parts seperated by a very very thing piece of rubber (these are called harmonic balancers). this piece of rubber can seperate over time and the pulley can become off balance as you said, particularly if someone at some point in time used something to pry the crank off. that could also cause the apparent wobble. if you look really close you should be able to tell if the pulley isn't seated rigth (the situations explained above) or the pulley inner and outer parts are out of alignment as i just described. pretty sure 2.2 motors have this same kind of pulley. really annoying to me. i like reliability and swapping in a solid pulley is the solution in my book as there is no noticeable vibration with a solid pulley.

 

i have heard of people inserting self tapping screws into the rubber and also welding the pulley together to prevent it from failing (coming apart at that rubber ring), i wouldn't do either of those i think it should be replaced. but welding it would certainly be a permanent fix if done properly.

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