F150 Dampeners: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The first is the dampener that came out of my 2005 F150. At 1000 hours, it was exhibiting the “chirp” of pending failure, but still looks okay. Note the shape of the balancing lobes. This is different than later units. We can call this one the “Bad”. The gear material of the drive and final gear is some sort of black composite. The intermediate gear is steel.

The second picture is the “ugly”. Here the drive gear stripped at about 700 hours in a commercial application. The debris clogged the oil pump screen, starved the engine for oil and warranted a new powerhead because the melted material was almost impossible to remove. This dampener comes from a 2007 unit. Note the different balancing lobes.

The final pic shows Yamaha’s solution. Note the different gear material in both the drive and final gears. Also there is that “finger” poking up from the first driven shaft. I didn’t notice that feature when I was taking the pictures, so I did not investigate what it might be intended for. Might possibly be an extension from the oil galley over the bearing to spray oil on the drive and intermediate gears. Next time I’m down at the Yamaha dealer, I’ll take a closer look.