Well, I got the 460 all torn apart and ready to go to the machine shop. I plan on going back together with all stock stuff, no mods on this one. The guy wants to do this as cheap as possible and is going to use it for daily driving and light pulling. Going to have the heads rebuilt, block honed and bored, if needed. Will have the the flywheel resurfaced. Replace the cam and have the machine shop press in the cam bearings. Pistons all look good and move well on the pins, so if engine doesn't have to be bored, we will reuse the pistons. However, if you have any inputs on any of this feel free to respond.

My true question here, is while removing the harmonic balancer I was using a pulley puller and pulled the outer ring off of the inner portion. Keep in mind it has been a while since I rebuilt an engine and sometimes we forget the simple things. Once I realized my mistake, fortunately prior to pulling the outer ring all the way off, I got the correct puller and removed the balancer the rest of the way.
Now, I had a harmonic balancer with the outer ring half of the way off of the inner ring. Of course being a retired Marine, I have learned, when all else fails.....get a bigger hammer. So that is what I did. I took a hammer and beat the dang thing back on. The outer ring went back on the inner ring, but some of the rubber insulator didn't make it all the way back on.
Now, for the big question: Do you think this will cause problems later down the road? I don't think it shifted any, left or right, but I don't want to send this guy down the road with something that may effect the engine later on. He can change the spark plugs if you keep an eye on him.
Thanks for you time and your help.

 

Its pretty common for these to come apart, The rubber gets dried up and weather checked. I would replace it will a good used one or aftermarket. Even if it did come off while running probably wouldnt do much damage if caught in time, But rather pay a little now or pay alot later for a tow truck.

 

Don't even think of re-using it. Like c_rossman said above, either go new or get a used one of same vintage from a wrecking yard. Actually that balancer could do a lot of damage if it came apart at higher RPM's.
Deen

 

I was leaning towards that all the time, but thought I would get some added infromation from you all here. I have to agree with c_rossman, it probally wouldn't come apart, but........ So I guess we will start the search for a new/used one.

Thanks.

 

Well, just to bring you all up to date. We got the engine back together, replaced the harmonic balancer.
It was running quite well. However after only 60 miles, I was driving down the road at about 60 mph and the thing backfire one loud time and died!!
I got pulled over to the side of the road and went to work trying to figure what the heck had went wrong.
Oh, so many things were running through my head, the little voices were getting louder!!
After several checks it was apparent, we were no longer getting any spark, which lead me to believe a fried wire, bad coil or ignition module.
Luckily we were only about five miles from the house, unluckily it was about 9 pm. So after several trips to the house for the coil, ignition mode and some tools, we were no better off. Still no spark.
We pulled the distribitor cap and low and behold, the rotor was not turning.
Back to the house to get a distribitor off of a 400 engine I have there. Once we returned, we were able to pull the one out of the 460 to find that the upper bearing had froze up and the gear at the lower end had some broken teeth on it.
Put the distribitor in and fired the bad puppy up! Drove it home.
Now you all may ask, why I didn't just have the thing towed home? We had a bunch of stuff loaded in the camper shell in the back and would have had to unload it first, so things didn't slide to the rear and get broken. This would not have only been a pain in the butt, it would have been quite unsafe to do at night on the side of the road. So we opted to try to get it running, not to say this was much safer, but more satisfying.
Anyhow, it is now back at the house. We will have to replace the distribitor, fix a exhaust leak that has reared it's ugly head and am thinking of dropping the oil pan to remove any of the broken gear parts. I am undecided about this now, as part of me says they aren't going to go anywhere but the bottom of the pan and may even come out when we do the first oil change.....yet.....the other, wiser, side says, open it up and get them out of there!!
So this is my poll........Do we open it up, or let dead pieces lie?

 

Well, no matter what the oil is going to come out. Why not warm it up and pull the plug and see if it comes out with the oil. If not, the oils is already out, so you can pull the pan. I've had shear pins fail and not pulled the pan, but all three peices came out with the distributor. I don't think i would leave broken peices sitting in a pan. As the oil moves around, the peices will start floating around.