I have an 1983 300 D Turbo that I bought recently. It had such horrendous motor mounts that my kids and wife named it the Rattlemobile. Well, after changing the motor mounts and adding a hood pad, it doesn’t rattle anymore, but now there are more serious problems afoot.

While driving a car full of sleeping family home from grandma’s, the power steering went out, battery light came on, and the motor began to run hot. I had no choice and limped home, eyeing the temp gauge the whole time, and later discovered that the main pulley was not turning at all.

My friend, and experienced Benz wrench, declared the following:

It appears that the following is the most likely sequence of events on this failure*... motor mounts out, continued operation caused extreme vibration, crankshaft snout bolt backed out about a quarter to three eights of an inch (no locktite evidenced on the snout bolt and the vibration*also completely backed out and lost the alt pivot bolt), harmonic balancer backed*outward enough to clear the keyways, the*woodruff keys disintegrated under the increased extreme load, the balancer spun ....snout of the crank?* Questionable, I'm anxious to see what the new*woodruff keys will look like*since the recesses for them on the crank nose look ... well ... weird to me ...

Any advice on how to proceed? I have searched the old threads, but some questions remain:

Would photos of the crankshaft snout help?

Since I don’t have the old woodruff keys, which should I get? Fastlane has several, all calibrated to different angles. How can I tell which ones to get?

Anybody have any ideas on how to hold the crankshaft in place while we torque on it without the $167 tool?

I am sure more anguished questions are to come, and thank you in advance for your kind replies

RSCarey