thanks dude - appreciate it.

on the one hand, it's healthy to be skeptical.  on the other, i've done
enough failure analysis on enough machinery to know what i'm looking at.
 i can also deduce something of the service history based in what i see.

sorry, but i'm the guy that took it off.  and if you can't accept that
the pictured galling happened with the key installed, then we have a
debate beyond the tech arena.  the woodruff key, the pulley wheel and
the crank keyway were all in perfectly acceptable condition, although
there was evidence of lash - much like the lash evident on the splines
of a driveshaft.  there was no evidence of the pulley wheel ever having
been spun out.

without the woodruff, the pulley would absolutely rotate.  the more the
bolt was torqued, the more difficult it would be to turn, but saying it
won't & can't move is like denial of elasticity.

regarding the 91 vehicle's history, i know that it had been relatively
well serviced.  it had 220k miles.  and that pulley bolt had been
removed 3 times.  you can't see it from the pic, but the skid mark at 2
o/c on the l/h bolt's washer in this pic:

http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/misc/jim-beam_pulley_pics/both_washer_u-side.jpg

it has 3 of those skidmarks, coinciding with the keyway, one for each
removal.  the galling evident on the other side of the washer is not
what you would see from 3 removals.  not by any stretch.

the 92 bolt otoh, you can see the evidence of one removal [evident from
the keyway mark] on the bolt, by me.  the bolt side of that washer shows
some minor skid evidence, but as you can see, it's not impacted the
plating and there's no evidence of galling whatsoever.

The pics are here:
http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/misc/jim-beam_pulley_pics/

Unfortunately, the pics aren't really evidence of much other than this:
You've taken photos of a pulley from an unknown car with an unknown history
given unknown servcicing by persons of unknown competence.

These pics are strongly suggestive of a pulley having been installed at
some point with no Woodruff key, or otherwise installed incorrectly. I can
assure you a pulley properly installed will not gall that way.

A properly tightened joint dowes not rotate. Your pictures do not prove
anythng one way or the other because we do not know the car's history.

i've just emailed you the photo evidence.  if you host it, we can all
discuss it.

i'm no electronics guy and no engineer.  i'm an [ex] metallurgist.  and
metallurgists spend a big proportion of their time sorting out the
screw-ups the engineers make because half of them don't know what
they're doing and were asleep in materials 101 or are too egotistical to
bother to ask.

check your email.  i've just sent you the galling evidence.  it's a
perfect textbook example.

the loctited bolt/splined pulley does not move.  the torque-only
bolt/woodruff-only pulley does.  the galling proves it.

except that we have the photo evidence to prove to the contrary!

jim beam <nospam@example.net> wrote in news:jY2dnf6UQMdVmPHeRVn-
sQ@speakeasy.net:

<snip>

Jim: Properly tightened, that bolt does NOT allow any sort of movement. It
/cannot/, and it /does not/. Period. Full stop. End of story.

You may be an electronics whiz, but you are clearly no mechanical engineer.

The pulley and the pulley bolt do NOT move in use, and the bolt absolutely
does NOT rotate so as to "tighten" after initial torque.

If you choose to believe that the bolt tightens more through rotation after
initial tightening torque, then you are misleading yourself and everyone
who reads your posts.

There are many reasons why some crank bolts are difficult to remove.
Rotation after initial tightening torque is *NOT* one of them.

this afternoon, i went to my favorite junkyard and bought two crank
bolts.  one from an 91 civic, one from a 92 civic.  i'm going to post
the pics later this evening, but the observations are these:

_91_
* eyeball=poppingly hard to shift - had to get a fulcrum and bounce full
bodyweight at the end of a 18"x3/4" breaker bar.
* no evidence of loctite.
* clear fretting damage on the mating surface between the washer & the
bolt head.
* no evidence of corrosion.  [i'm in california]
* pulley wheel locked with single woodruff key.

_92_
* it was definitely snug, but i could remove with one hand.
* bolt thread clearly loctited.
* no evidence of fretting.
* no evidence of corrosion.
* pulley wheel splined /and/ woodruffed.

now, we all know what loctite does - it binds threads so they don't
move.  no movement means no possible further tightening.  loctite also
means a bolt is hard to remove compared to its fastening torque.

conclusions:

1. there is /definitely/ lash in the 91 pulley wheel - something that
honda evidently felt needed to be addressed with the addition of a
splined interface for the 92.  [splines don't eliminate lash, but help
mitigate it.]  fretting [or lack thereof in the case of the 92] is as
clear an evidence of lash as you can get.

2. loctite /prevents/ further tightening of the bolt!  hence the 92 was
much easier to remove, despite the loctite's binding function.  the
reduced lash would help in this regard also.

time to get out the camera...