Hi guys just in the middle of fitting a new timing belt,I'm at the stage of removing the bolt that holds the crankshaft pulley on, it's being a real pig to undo ! I have tried a super cheap auto cheap or rattle gun with no luck and now a friend has lent me a cordless metabo rattle gun , still won't budge ! I do hope it's a right hand thread ??. I can't see any mention of it being LH thread in the manual? Any way I'm going to try some heat on it in the morning and see if that helps??. Any input would be most welcome ,, thanks

Don't put any heat on it.
Normal thread.
Use a socket with long extension, move the extension so it is up against a solid part of the body work, no slack.
Bump the ignition.
Bolt now lose. (or your extension bar looks like a pretzel)
Pulley should just slide off, if not it may have gotten water in it at some time and you have to patiently force it off.

From your other post, it sounds like the belt wasn't set up correctly. Normally there is a bit of slack at the water pump with the engine off, but nowhere near enough to walk the belt one tooth displaced.
Ater possibilities are the hydraulic tensioner is faulty, or the bolt holding the pulley with the 2 holes has come loose. Or something broke.

Use rattle gun to do bolt up when all back together. Or make up a device for holding the pulley steady while you torque up the bolt.

I'm with max, don't use heat. best tool i ever invested in recently was a long breaker bar 1/2" drive. there's nothing I've struck yet I can't undo with ease including driveshaft nuts. 6 sided sockets are also a safer bet too on the tough stuff as opposed to the multi point sockets.

I've done the starter trick and it works. I had a brand new crank bolt installed on advice from mits when they did my belt. reckon they had seen old bolts work loose.

Thanks guys for your info, you say not to use any heat ?? I have the feeling that the back street mechanic that did this job previously has used a large amount of loctite ? I made a Y shaped tool out of flat bar with bolts attached to go in the holes and jammed it against suspension, used a long bar with a pipe for extra leverage just ended up bending my home made locking tool,in other forums I googled regarding this engine they say use heat to free the loctite and then use a rattle gun ? The trouble is I have the engine mounting brackets removed now and don't really want to rebuild them if I don't have too ?

good morning, I've been out in the garage since 6am couldn't sleep working about how i was going too get that bolt out ?// i made a locking tool from 25x5 mm flat bar with 2 10mm bolts in it, used a socket with a very long extension but still wouldn't budge , time to pull hair out, got a 22mm longish ring key and rested it on top of the drive shaft reconnected battery and give it a very quick spin made an awful noise ?? went back underneath and bugger me it was undone, now the rebuilding starts, do i really need a new bolt or does permalocker work? i don't want it coming loose .

I've never used a new bolt - only done the job twice though.I figure if the undoing process doesn't rip the head right off, the bolt is ok to use again.
From the factory, the bolt has some loctite or similar on it, hence the excessive force needed to undo it.

On my TJ, I used an air powered cheap rattle gun rated for 300 Nm (as if!) to do the bolt up, hasn't caused a problem in 5 years.
On my TL, I used a tool similar to the one you made up and a torque wrench. You may find your pulley holding tool works well in doing the bolt up, once you replace the bent bolts. You'd probably feel better about the job if the bolt ends up done up to the right torque, rather than rattled back on.

I didn't use any thread locker on the bolts either time other than what was left on the bolt of the factory stuff. Didn't clean the bolts, didn't oil them.

Good luck analysing/fixing whatever is wrong under the cover.

EDIT: under no circumstances be tempted to run the engine after fixing the problem with that crank bolt not done up properly. A lot of stuff under the cover relies being held in the correct position by that bolt. (This may become clearer once you get the cover off.)

in the process of rebuilding ! i have the belt on and adjusted ,i rotated 2 full turns as per manual, all seems to be lined up, its a bit of guess work to get that pin in and out of tensioner hole but i think its got the correct amount of tension now? also I'm thinking about making 2 screw in rods to locate plenum gasket whilst fitting plenum ! looks like it could move if its not located properly?other than that ill take it slowly and hopefully it should have fixed that annoying start up rattle? i will post if it works ,,

If the pin slides in and out of the holes easily tension is ok.

What exactly did you find wrong in there?

Never used rods and I don't remember having a problem with the plenum gasket.
Remember the bolts that hold the plenum on are huge, but screw into the alloy of the lower section, so observe manual torque settings closely or they may strip.

The gasket on the EGR valve on the back of the plenum can be a real pain to get right.

I never ended up using any guide pins, I was just carefull , it's all back together now and runs ok, looking at the old belt when I had covers off, seemed as though there was slack in most runs of belt ?? Seems ok now after a new belt and tensioner, also I replaced adjustment idler pulley on P/S, although I need to readjust tomorrow because one of them has a squeal on start up, will give it a few miles and then retighten crankshaft bolt just to be on safe side, quite pleased as there were no left over nuts and bolts, that's a first for me ha ha

This may be a bit late, but I found a photo of how I removed the pulley without any special tools.

It was damn tight and this worked very effectively.

A small piece of flat steel between allen key and chassis rail can't be seen.

http://i68.tinypic.com/2133k9c.jpg

Smart!
You could reverse that to put it back together as well.
Some of the Magna pulleys don't look like that though.

Smart!
You could reverse that to put it back together as well.
.

Correct...just reverse the diametric location.

I made a C spanner out of 10m/m plate got some high tensile bolts in it to match holes rested it on the floor and torqued to 185nm , also painted a white line across pulley and through bolt , I thought easy visual way for occasional check from underneath to see if any movement of bolt ? Seems ok after 3 weeks !

Sometimes the best tools are the ones you make yourself.
Mine is a section of rectangular mild steel tube with 3 holes, 2 for the bolts and a large one for the socket. Unfortunately the Magna pulley doesn't have those nice bolt holes, but it is still do-able.

Marking the bolt and pulley is a good idea, but if it is at the right torque it's not going to move, ever.
I'd be marking the centre bolts through the idlers for the external belts for the same reason. I couldn't get a torque wrench on those due to lack of clearance, so I check them once in a while.

My TJ is coming up to 5 years since the last belt change, but the belt has only done sub 40,000 km so I might let that job slide for another 2 years, then do the whole lot.

Crazy holes in the 2nd gen pulley!
This DIY tool worked great for me.

http://i.imgur.com/Sv5UALe.jpg

Cool...but this is the 380 forum....

I know!
Are you implying that this tool design, with a single pivot point to allow self centring, cannot be used on a 380 harmonic balancer?

Except for the choice in bolts, it would work great on the 380 pulley.

2nd, 3rd gen - bolts need to bite on the edges of the holes in the pulley. ie big diameter, coarse thread is best.
380 - bolts need to fit inside the 2 holes - thinner, high tensile bolts needed.

Looks like a good locking tool , great pic by the way, wish someone would explain in easy steps how to post pics on here?

I know!
Are you implying that this tool design, with a single pivot point to allow self centring, cannot be used on a 380 harmonic balancer?


A magna harmonic balancer.

That might confuse someone reading the thread later on don't you think?

Maybe!
Just in case:
The Harmonic Balancer on Mitsi's is also the Crankshaft Pulley.

Wikipedia:
A harmonic balancer (also called crank pulley damper, crankshaft damper, torsional damper, or vibration damper) is a device connected to the crankshaft of an engine to reduce torsional vibration and serves as a pulley for drive belts.

@ Alan3103

First: I resize my pictures to a smaller foot print (eg 800 x 600 pixels).
If using MS windows you can even use its paint program to resize.
Second: Then upload the picture to imgur (or another photographic file sharing site).
They will provide links to the uploaded image (You want to copy the link to suit bulletin boards).
Third: Copy that link somewhere in your reply on the AMC forum.
It will fetch the referenced picture (from imgur) and show it here.

For the crankshaft tool the link is
[I M G]http://i.imgur.com/j8frJA7.jpg[/I M G]


Shows as
http://i.imgur.com/j8frJA7.jpg

Thanks for that I will give it a go, I mostly use Apple pc or IPads I uploaded an app called tiny pics someone suggested that programme would be OK to use, !