Am I driving a time bomb? Crank keyway content

I was delivering pizzas last night in my '95 Civic, parked with engine running in a driveway, as I walked back to the car I noticed the motor was making funny noises. Noticed battery light was on. Drove to the nearest streetlamp, popped the hood, saw the crank pulley was not turning even though the car was running, shut hood and drove 3-4kms straight to my work and shut it down.

Some backround info on the setup - D16A6 bottom end with D16Z6 head, installed into an '95 coupe about 5000 kilometers ago. Used to be in an '90 hatch, when I swapped it into the coupe I transferred over the D15B7 crank pulley from the coupe's original motor because the D16A6 pulley can't be used with power steering.

Here's what I found: Bolt and keyway were just chillin' on top of my splash shield.

Pulley is all bored out.

Left to right: D16Z6 pulley, D15B7 pulley, D16A6 pulley. The D15B7 pulley has no dampening rubber and is a fair bit lighter than the D16Z6 pulley.

Timing belt crank gear was trying to walk off, melted the washer into the covers. Cover probably saved me from skipped belt.

Other half of bolt and you can see how the keyway on the crank is distorted a bit.

Removed bolt.

Buffed the end of the crank down so the new pulley would sit straight.

Keyway in place. It didn't want to slide all the way in, and you can see how the keyway is wider at the end. Honestly it looks better in pictures, in person the gap seemed larger.

Installed D16Z6 crank pulley and used medium loctite on the keyway and on the crank pulley bore as well. None on the bolt. Tightened the bolt with my impact (don't have the proper tool).

So the car runs and drives normally, but I'm still worried about the keyway, am I safe or is this a ticking time-bomb? I had to throw it together for now as this is my daily driver.

I do have a spare D16Z6 bottom end and spare D16A6 head (other halfs of what this motor was put together with), both in need of a rebuild.

My mitsu Montero did something similar. Turns out they had a recall because the bolt would shear off in the crankshaft and you'd loose the whole works. Did you know a recall expires after a certain period of time? I found that out after mine broke and it was too late(by about a year) to be fixed by the recall. I drilled it out as best I could and tapped it with something that I thought was close. Then I screwed up and used a stainless bolt(nuclear grade) and put the whole works together. Just to make sure, I packed the hole w/some JB weld before threading in the bolt. Boy, was that dumb. The bolt sheared off again, about 14 months later. I sold the car, but told the new guy to use the new stock bolt I gave him. It's been fine for him for 2 years now. EDIT: It was only dumb because I used a stainless bolt-actually packing it w/JB was good, if I didn't have to drill it out again. Use a NEW bolt , torqued correctly and you should have a permanent fix.

The only thing I would have done differently was to use red Loctite instead, but I think it will hold. Really what's the worse that can happen? The crank is already marred, it would need to be replaced anyway if you were to fix it "proper".

is the bolt that holds the pulley on a "stretch bolt"?

In the VW world those get tossed after one use, and can often times net a damaged crank snout if re-used (more often than not, the problem is with either a 16v or a G60)

I'm not sure, I work in a shop and I've never seen someone put a new one on, but I've been doing some reading and apparently Honda does now recommend replacing it each time.

No mention of that in my copy of the factory service manual though, must have been an update. I'm just reading that section now, it actually specifies 53lb-ft of torque for that bolt. That seems very low, last pulley I replaced on a Honda ('98 2.5 TL) the torque spec was 180 ft-lbs.

EDIT: Now I know why it's so low, they recommend lubing the threads with oil before torquing.

Keyway issues occur in the earliest 1.6 Miatas. Google "Loctite Fix" -- you may find some additional help or ideas, inlcuding the use of JB Weld.

Marty! The other white meat.... wrote: The only thing I would have done differently was to use red Loctite instead, but I think it will hold. Really what's the worse that can happen? The crank is already marred, it would need to be replaced anyway if you were to fix it "proper".

+1. Pull that bolt out tonight and put some red loctite on it. It'll never back out on it's own again. Be sure to read and follow the directions on the loctite bottle.

Did you make sure to remove any oil from the crankshaft uplley?

Time Bomb= GM minivan. Clanking civic= bad owner.

Why cant u weld the sucker on? You're gonna have to replace the crank and pulley anyways. Just put a few tacks around, and when you need to get the pulley off just center punch the welds and drill em.