Bad Water Pump/ harmonic ballancer

Guys, the XJ started making 1st an internitant knock now a consntat whine while under load at 1st and now almost always comming from the front of the engine .. its is a fairly deep whine like a whonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn ... to me it sounds like the water pump has given out.. there was no coolant from the weap hole that i could see but my coolant level was down so it could ahve weaped out before and i did not see it... the thing is its not all the time.. l let the thing sit a few hrs and it went away but its there more often then not... i took my screwdriver and used it to "listen" with and i couldnt tell wehre it was comming from but it doesnt sound like the p/s pump which is fairly new, and it does sound like the h2o pump i guess. the thing is the engine had somewhat of a shake to it whcih si making me think the harmonic ballancer is bad... is there anyway to check it for wear?

Remember, you've got a few other rotating parts under there too. On my 98, I had what I thought was a bad alternator bearing...turned out to be the AC compressor pulley bearing was shot and literally falling apart. The only way I was able to tell was to remove the serp belt and spin each component by hand. Idler pulleys and such are easy to check this way, as well as the water pump and PS, AC. Don't forget to check the mechanical fan bearing...its easy to overlook.

As for your HB, not a lot to check there other than making sure that its not "walking" forward or backward. From my experiences, the front surface of the HB should be flush with the inner part of the HB that mounts up to the crankshaft. If you see rubber strips or chunks missing between the two pieces, or if its not flush, or if your belt isn't lined up with your other pulleys or if its got about 150k miles on it, you need to have it replaced.

Dave