Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
The main drive pulley for the serpentine belt is a combination pulley and harmonic balancer. They go bad around 75K to 85K miles. There is a black rubber piece between the inner pulley and the outer drive pulley. That black rubber breaks down with age and the outer pulley becomes un-aligned and that causes the serpentine belt to fall off of the drive pulley. When that happens the vehicle looses power-steering, alternator, and water-pump. Even if the person driving it has the mussel to man-handle the steering-wheel without the assist of the power, the engine will quickly over-heat without the water-pump working. And if someone does put a new serpentine belt on it will quickly fall off, until a new balancer/pulley is put on.
Note, to access the balance/pulley remove the front wheel and the wheel-well.
Also to flush the power-steering fluid with new fluid, get some type of siphon and two large bottles of power-steering fluid, and a container to put used fluid into.
Siphon out the power-steering fluid, replace with new fluid, start the engine and turn the steering wheel all the way to one side, and then all the way to the other side and then back to center, shut off the engine, and repeat until you use up all of the two big bottles of fluid.
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Yeah mine went bad at around 100k miles. They actually have a plastic access panel to get to the balancer, you don't have to pull the wheel well as you can swivel the access panel out of the way. Given the pain in the [censored] it is to get everything lined up and pull the balancer without damaging the CPS sensor (don't screw the puller bolts all the way in or the magnetic pull will screw up the sensor and cause a no start condition)I'd wait until it went bad to replace. My 3800 saw a lot of high RPM operation between 75k and the failure of the balancer which most likely contributed to it falling apart. I still drove it 60 miles back home without it damaging anything. Made a god awful racket tho. I remember sitting at a drive thru and hearing the bang bang bang of the balancer and thinking that couldn't be me. Moved the gear selector around and I was like oh [censored] my car is DONE!