500 sel water pump

[MBBREINIG]

I'm replacing a water pump on an 83 500 sel euro and I don't have a wheel puller handy.... any suggestions????

[E150GT]

Are you talking about the harmonic balancer? If so, I got a universal puller at autozone and rented it and it worked great. I tried the specific harmonic balancer pullers and they did not work.

[pmckechnie]

If I rember correctly, the balancer does not have to come off. Look at the attachment and you will notice a notch in the balancer which allows the bottom bolt to be taken out.
I may be wrong about this as the last water pump I put on was on my 500SEL while the engine was out of the car.

[E150GT]

perhaps thats true on the 500SEL. My experience is from a 420SEL. If that would work that way on the 420, my waterpump job would have been way smoother.

[quaid]

The balancer doesn't need to come off, but it makes the job alot easier if it does. It took me a good afternoons work to change it out on my car by leaving it on. It was a couple of years ago, but I remember the bottom couple of bolts were real tricky to get out.

My car is an '85 500 SEL Euro.

[Johnhef]

You don't need to remove the balancer on 116 or 117 engines to do the waterpump, but if you want to, just remove the 6 allen bolts and work it back and forth, it will come off.

[Strife]

This question comes up a lot.

1. I think I'm pretty mechanically adept, and if I have to buy a tool I'll buy it, and if I can't buy it I'll make it or have it made. But there was NO WAY that I could get the bottom water pump bolt out without taking off the balancer. The notch may have worked on an earlier car, but the 560 pump is different than the iron 117 or the 116, and the bolt head didn't quite line up with the notch. You can loosen the bolt - but you will never get it out without balancer removal.

2. That being said, the balancer is pretty easy to get off, if you have patience.

a. Soak the heck out of it in-between the crack of the balancer and the hub with PB blaster, and wait a few hours.

b. Indelibly mark the balancer indexed to the hub. This is important.

c. After removing the six bolts, Use a plastic mallet to bang the balancer back and forth to wiggle it off.

d. Reinstall the balancer when done. Note that one of the six bolts is not equidistant from the others and the balancer will only go on in one position - that's why step (b), and the need to realign the marks you made. The bolt holes in the hub are only very slightly different, it's hard to see, and you will otherwise spend a lot of time hunting for the right position. With my luck, I think I got 5 bolts in 5 times (that's 25 bolt installations) before I got it right.

[MBBREINIG]

Thanx for everybody's suggestions. I did have to remove the 6 bolts and with a couple of taps the balancer came right off and made the R & R alot easier.