G'day All,

Some thing's been puzzling me for some time - why do so many of these OM617 balancers fail? By failure I mean balancers "spinning" on the crankshaft - which then leads on to people wanting to drill new holes or weld the balancer onto the crankshaft...

How come so many people have suffered from problems with the front balancer on these engines and those little dowel pins?

How can all those 27mm bolts just fall out? It is a high torque bolt - it shouldn't happen.

For those that don't know - the balancer on an OM615 / 616 / 617 engine is held in place by two dowel pins in cut outs on the crankshaft and the balancer.






This design is used on other Mercedes engines but I haven't heard of it happening on other engines...


...it seems to be a Diesel thing – and we all know they can shake with the best of them!


A list of engines that uses this system is given in this thread => 000007008244 Dowel for harmonic balancer, Large Engine Application List



So I've come up with this research list which I've turned into a poll to see if we can figure out what is going on.


It seems to me to be possible that the engines fitted with the longer pulley used to power the air conditioning are more susceptible to this problem. But I don't know if this is true. So I need your help to see if this hunch of mine could be right or not.


If you are willing to give more information that would be useful to hear about too.


For example:-


Do you know if “the previous owner” or “the previous owner's mechanic” was in the habit of

1. Turning the engine backwards
2. Not torquing up the 27mm bolt correctly because it is difficult to stop the crank from turning without a flywheel clamp
3. Running the engine with damaged pulleys
4. Fitting the thrust washers the wrong way round
5. Tightening V belts so much you could tune them to twang like high octave violin strings
6. Not paying any attention to the car – only very reluctantly putting in fuel

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!