LT1 dampner-poor design?

[72Mako]

I've got a friend with a '93 LT-1 6-speed coupe-55K. Beautiful and capable car. He was telling me that the other day, he noticed that his serpentine belt was moving around and that the harmonic balancer was wobbling. He has not pulled it yet but it looks like the harmonic balancer needs replacing. The outer ring of the dampner is moving around in relation to the inner hub. But what caught my attention was that the outer ring of the harmonic balancer also drives the serpentine belt! I'm used to the old GM design of harmonic balancer only-using a seperate pulley for the drive belts. If I understand how my buddy's balancer works, he has a inner hub that is attached to the crank snout, an outer ring (weight-dampner) that also is grooved to run the serpentine belt and both seperated with a elastomeric material. It seems that driving the serpentine belt off the outer dampner ring would put a lot of stress on the elastomeric material causing it to fail early-55K in the case of my buddy's car. Not slamming C4's cause my C3 has it's share of head scratchers, but is this a poor design? Charles

 

[Ken]

^^^ To The Top ^^^

 

[72Mako]

Since I posted this, in conversation have learned that the LT1 Chevy's are not the only manufacture doing this. So there must be sound engineering behind this. Just eyeballing his motor, I would guess it was a way to get packaging room against the crossmember. Just seemed strange to me. Charles