I bought this balancer new last year and have not ran it past 5500 rpm. I heard a scraping noise the other day, and the outer ring has walked towards the engine and is now scraping against it. What makes a balancer come apart, heat? I over heated once last year, but didnt go over 240 according to my temp gauge. Thanks

The rubber bond between the two sections of the balancer has failed.
What brand balancer is it?
Luckly it moved rearward... :(

It was a Summit brand, this one:

http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?part=SUM%2D161358&N=700+4294925232+4294839044+400304+4294908216+4294 871851+4294840140+115&autoview=sku

I have one of those POS paper weights also !!!!

Bill

Usually two things... poor quality or installing them with a hammer will make them fail especially if you beat on the outer ring to install it.

I definitely didnt use a hammer to install it. That would be like installing tires with a blow torch to soften them up. Maybe my overheating along with its low quality screwed it up.

Mine was installed with a balancer installation tool and never overheated. They are just a poor quality

67, (name ??? )

The other thing that can cause a damper to fail is if the engine is terribly out of balance. The damper tries to absorb the torsional vibrations and eventually fails.

I just bought the same one.67EC did you heat it up in an oven or did you boil it before you put it on.maybe i should send mine back before i put it on.Just wondering if the heating it up before installation loosened up something?

It looks like the same thing happened to MrBill, so I would send it back. I just installed it with the $20 "tool", I didnt heat it up. I think there must just be something wrong with them. I am going to use an $80 GMPP balancer, supposedly the same as used on the ZZ4.

Mine has separated also and the car has not been driven on the street yet. Only cranked in the garage. Had it for over a year. Summit said they would replace it. I wonder if the not heating it up before installation caused it to fail. Boiling in water for 15 minutes would definitely cause the bond between the two to expand and should therefore bond and not separate.
The guy that installed my engine did not heat up the balancer before installation. gripes.
Think it is worth trying a new one but boiling it first? Summit rep said they did not have much on record of return of this item.
Herb

I've been using the Summit balancers for a while, but only the SFI-approved ones. I haven't had any issues with those......yet!

I don't have ANY experience with their non-SFI ones. Like was mentioned above, it looks like the bond for the rubber failed.



Randy