H Crank Pulley

[Hawaii318ti]

About 6 months ago i picket up a 98 318ti with 62k miles on it (navy wife who only drove it 2-3k miles a year, ran great until recently, Last week while driving, my water pump bearing decided to jump ship on me and beat the old water pump up really bad. After replacing the water pump and getting everything back together I noticed an irregular sound coming from the serpentine belt area. Upon looking down. I notice my Harmonic Crank pulley resembles and poorly balanced wheel alignment, needless to say it has a decent wobble in it, and the noise it was producing did go away after a few min on idle but did resume after i turned it on again to get my roommates take on the situation( i have only taken it for a 1 mile test drive to test the new water pump under pressure and ensure no leaks) sadly the noise resembles the noise of the water pump bearing going bad. After talking it over with my pops who lives on the mainland, i live in Hawaii, i could have a whole storm ahead of me, and to top it off there is a new awesome oil leak from which seems to be from the oil pan gasket.... thoughts?

[Hawaii318ti]

scratch that the oil leak is not new, its an existing issue that is on my list of to do's

[cooljess76]

It could be the oil pan gasket, but two things come to mind. Since the crank pulley is unbalanced, it's very possible that the front crank seal got damaged. Also, check the oil filter housing where it mounts to the engine block. There's a paper gasket and two o-rings between the housing and block that are known to fail. Try degreasing the front and bottom of the engine to see if you could identify where the leak is. Hopefully it's not the front crank seal or oil pan gasket. If it's the front crank seal, I think you have to remove the timing cover which requires you to remove the valve cover, and possibly the timing chain and cam sprockets(at least on my 6cyl it did). If it's the oil pan gasket, I'm pretty sure you have to raise the engine or drop the front subframe to remove the oil pan.

Welcome to the forum BTW.