After leaving my in-laws house on Tuesday I was trying to get on the freeway, I was accelerating to speed and when I hit 55 I heard a clank and my speedometer stopped moving but my rmps were going higher, my instinct was to let off the gas but I was on the on-ramp of the freeway so I kept it gassed until I could pull off onto the shoulder, as soon as I got to a low speed it died. When I finally got it to turn over again it drove horrible, it would not shift out of first unless I babied the gas so I drove 10mph the rest of the way home.

Now that it's home and light out it started right up but I can hear a clanking sound coming from the top of the motor somewhere, and it sounds like one of the pulleys or balancers is about to wobble right off. The fan clutch sounds like it's grinding against something, the fan still spins freely when the truck is off though.

The truck did start to overheat before it died, I am almost wondering if the waterpump went out and is inhibiting the pulleys from spinning properly, throwing everything off balance?

Should I get this into a mechanic or try and figure this out myself? Does this sound like anything common?

Not sure if this is related but I had an on-going acceleration issue where it would hesistate at red-lights before going again, it was only about a second or two delay and I ran some seafoam through it and cleaned up all the sensors and that seemed to fix the issue temporairly but it started again the same day all this happened.

 

I would try to determine what broke before taking to a shop.

Take the tension off of the serpentine belt and check to see that everything will turn by hand (alternator, AC, tensioner, water pump).

Look to see if the harmonic balancer has separated with the outer ring flopping around behind the crank pulley.

Let us know what you find-out at this point.

 

Thank you for the reply, I will check it all out as soon as I get home from work today.

What one is the harmonic balancer?

 

Sorry for the delay I have been working overtime and didn't get a chance to look at my truck until today. I took this video (below) to help illustrate what is going on.

I checked the pulleys they all seemed ok but I could feel some flex on the tensioner pulley, is it supposed to be able to slightly move about 1cm forward and back? When the truck is running I can see it move up/down slightly.

The idler pulley also makes a slight sound if I pull or snag on the belt at all with my hand.

Here is the video, I only ran it for about 20 seconds out of fear of causing more damage:

I did notice the oil cooler line running into the radiator is leaking oil, could this be related?

 

Wife turned around when she heard the noise and said "it's broke".

Remove the belt and take another 20 second video.

 

Hopefully its something I can fix that is not a sound I have ever heard before. I will do anothe video first thing after work tomorrow thanks for your help

 

Uploading a new video now, should be up soon once YouTube decided to approve it and then I will post. Thanks again for all your help and sorry for the delayed response I had some issues on NYE and didnt get around to working on the truck again til today.

 

Here is the video, I got under the truck and heard the noise coming from the balancer and it was wobbling around a bit. How do I now determine if the crankshaft is bent or if it's just the balancer? Are balancers something a moderate-novice can do?

 

Makes me cringe What's the oil pressure at idle? Any coolant in the oil? Any coolant in the radiator? Any sign of milkshake on the underside of the oil fill cap? Sure sounds like she spun a bearing, and she's hammering away pretty good at it. Definitely not a good idea to drive it until you find out for sure what it is, and fix it.

 

Can I start it again to check the oil pressure without causing any damage? Could that leak in the oil cooler line be related?

I am not all that knowledgeable when it comes to cars, what is a spun bearing that does not sound good.

The oil looks fine, it's ready to be changed but now low or super dirty. The coolant looks a little brown and murky though, almost like rusty or dirty water, no visible oil or milkyness.

I just looked up a few videos online describing spun bearings and it sounds exactly like what my truck is doing. I am bummed since I just threw a breand new fuel pump in there too that was not cheap and it looks like now I might be taking a loss on the blazer.