I couldn't believe it, my belts shredded and flew off on the way home yesterday. Turns out the harmonic balancer just died on me, causing the belts to spontaneously disintegrate... Thing is, I've never had oil anywhere near the thing, so I don't know what could cause this to happen at just 59000 miles... Fortunately I'm within a couple miles of the magic 60000, so it should be covered under warranty. Can anyone think of anything the stealership will try to blame this on so I can head them off at the punch? I know they will start by saying I don't keep my oil filled, that's where they always start. Fortunately I had my last oil change sent off to Blackwell for testing and I can prove that there is no particulates or other **** in the oil that might have caused it. Air filter was due to be replaced at 60K, so I'm going to go ahead and drop the new one in before taking it to the shop. I'll top off allllll the fluids. Am I missing something? It's a $450 repair minimum, so I don't want them to find some completely unrelated thing to screw me on the warranty.

The belts started to whine on the way to school in the morning and were quite loud when I got there, but they were replaced just a year ago, so I couldn't understand why they might be giving me troubles. I looked under the hood and everything seemed to be spinning fine, so I figured I'd pick up some belts on the way home and drop them in before taking it to a shop to figure out what caused the failure. Obviously I didn't make it... Ended up towing it to the nearest shop, where they told me the balancer nearly chewed all the way through the auto tranny casing. The belt also tried to chew through the cover for the timing belt That could have sucked even worse. So now I may even need to have the tranny rebuilt. I am not a happy camper, where is my TOYOTA RELIABILITY???

 

Harmonic balancer as in on the front of the engine?

Do you mean the balancer damaged the front engine cover?

Not sure what changing the oil has to do with the balancer.

Suggest you contact the dealer and ask for warranty repairs, the balancer should not have failed.

 

I just dropped it at the dealership. The harmonic balancer is also the pulley that drives both belts. The weight is the metal pulleys and the elastomeric rubber connects the pulleys to the shaft. The pulley separated from the rubber and slid in towards the timing belt and engine, had it not made contact with the transmission housing it would have slid straight in and chewed up the timing belt. It's a bad scenario all around and I'm lucky to still have a engine at all...

 

You mean the housing in front of the engine containing the oil pump?

Transmission housing is in the rear of engine.

If under warranty get Toyota to fix it for free, there is much to blame the owner on for causing this problem.

 

well it sounds like a defective harmonic balancer crank pulley. Have you washed the engine bay with any type of chemicals that could have affected the rubber adhesive? If not I would blame it on a defective part and fight them the whole way. The pulley being keyed to the crank could of caused engine damage also, so I would get them to look over the engine also. But deffinatley stick with defective part

 

oh man i didnt even see the part of your post about them changing the belts. if they took off the pulley then they would of had to put it back on correctly in correlation with balancing of crank etc. so i would be going after the belt guys too. thats too big of a coencidence to of had the belts just put on then this happens