Harmonic balancer touching the water pump
I have a rebuilt 340 that I've yet to fire up. I made a thread a while back about the engine just all the sudden not wanting to turn over one day. I figured the cylinder walls may have gotten rusty from sitting but I used one of those cameras to look in there and they look clean. I arranged to have the engine taken back to the machine shop tomorrow to see what was up so I took the time to take a bunch of the accessories off tonight to get it ready for tomorrow.
I noticed that the balancer was like kind of **** eyed on there and that the top of it was touching the bottom of the water pump. I got kind of excited because I figured the friction there was making it seem like the engine was froze up. So I took the balancer off and unfortunately it didn't help free the engine up much. I noticed the back side of the balancer was a little **** eyed so I put it in my press and pressed it back straight again.
I put the balancer back on and even though it's straight, it still touches the bottom of the water pump. Has anyone ever had this happen before? I'm guessing I'm going to need to order a new balancer anyway since this one got out of whack but I'm afraid the new one will end up touching the water pump as well. I suppose I could grind away part of the bottom of the pump but it really shouldn't be that close, should it?