Cascade Crew

[snooprob]

Hey guys! The time has come again to work on Black Betty. As I was driving along one day, minding my own business, I felt a clunk through the steering wheel. The next thing I know, the power steering is gone and the alternator isn't charging the battery. When I get home, I discover the belt coming half way off the harmonic balancer pully. It gets better. The harmonic balancer and hub are sitting at a funny angle. I pull the center bolt out of the hub and the harmonic balancer basically falls off. This doesn't seem normal. I look at the hub and see the following:



Shredded.

Nobody in town seems to carry the hub, not even Spalding our big wrecking yard. I checked around with Napa, Motion, and looked at RockAuto, but no luck. Finally, I looked on e-bay and found a used hub that somebody said came off a 95 LT1 motor. I bought the part and it showed up a few days later, but it looked different than the one that fell off. Jake said that Black Betty has a 97 LT1. In all of my online research I learned that the 92-95 LT1 has a different length hub than the 96-97. I purchase another hub, but this time from a certified GM parts distributor. The brand new hub showed up and looks identical to the one that was on ebay. (Left original, middle ebay, right new from gmpartsdirect.)



Later I find out the measurements are within one tenth of an inch of each other. Some caliper measurements confirm that the ebay hub and the new hub are the same size. My first question is, does anybody have a picture of a 97 LT1 hub? I'm wondering if the problems I'm having installing are because I'm trying to install the wrong hub.

Anyways, I try installing the new hub yesterday by creating my own tool out of threaded rod, 7/8" socket, some washers and a bearing.



The hub seems to install fairly easily until its about 2/3 of the way on. Then I hit a brick wall. I turned the nut so hard that it stripped the threads on the threaded rod. This is probably because it's not grade 8 threaded rod, but I'm nervous that if I get grade 8 threaded rod, I could damage the threads on the crankshaft. Should I just try to get the stronger threaded rod and go for it? I tried to rent the harmonic balancer install tool at O'Reilly's, but the threads weren't long enough to get through the hub into the crank.



As you can see. I still have about a half inch further to go...

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. I figure since you guys are the experts with these things, you might have some tips...

And just so you know, Jake is all distracted with a Miata he bought, so be sure to give him a hard time about it.

[snooprob]

Ok...so I think I have figured this out. It looks like the hub will not go on any further and that it is actually bottomed out even though it looks like there is still a half inch more to go. When I put the wheel on the hub yesterday it appeared as though the belt actually does align with the other pullys. It could explode on my with the test drive later today, but I'm going for it. I'll let you know whether or not it was a success...

[Twilightoptics]

As long as it bottoms and the pulleys line up you should be good to go.

[83Z28BlackBetty]

Way to go rob! Just make sure some Ram Jam is blasting through the speakers and it will be just fine. Trust me, Ram Jam solves everything.

~Bam-Balam!

[snooprob]

The test drive confirmed that it worked! Black Betty lives on. The belts even align better than when I took it apart. I think the "original" hub was the wrong size.

Ram Jammin'....