Flywheel fun

I mentioned last post that I've been distracted with job searching, school starting etc. In fact, I was wrestling with taking a contract in another city working for a missile manufacturer. The money was good, the project interesting, but I just couldn't face helping build missiles and bombs that were eventually going to land on people. The travel would have been unpleasant for the family (and me), too, but we would have accepted that as part of the new information job market dynamic.
In the end, we rarely have the opportunity to actually test our ethics like this. Given the alternative of possibly not working at all, not being able to support my family, pay the mortgage, buy food -or- helping build missiles for the government 2 airflights away from that family, what do you do? There are people that probably think they can make the decision easily, but I think if you really thought about it, you'd see why this was so difficult. Between the potential involvement (albeit indirectly) innocent deaths and the time away from my family, I couldn't do it. Anyway, here's hoping I find a job soon and this just becomes another interesting story to tell years from now. Returning to the bus...

After conferring with Kennedy Engineering (KEP), I resisted taking the flywheel to a machine shop. KEP indicated that the flywheel wouldn't have fit onto their balancing machine if the center hole were too small. In the meantime, I ordered a KEP pressure plate and heavy duty clutch disk from CIP1. They arrived today - and that was with their 10-14 day free shipping. Good to know that time window can be that pessimistic.
Last night, I followed their advice and slowly pressed the flywheel on using the old "jump the center" approach to torquing things down. Basically, crank one down a little bit and then jump across the centerpoint to the opposite bolt. Keep doing that until you need to set torque. It worked great. I cranked the flywheel down using a 17mm socket and torqued to 55 ft/lbs as specified in the KEP instructions.

It was starting to get late, but I figured I still had a little in the tank, so I unboxed the clutch disk and pressure plate from CIP1. They look like nice parts. I still had an output shaft from the old 091/1 transaxle I sold early in the Summer, so I had a way of aligning things. About 15 minutes later, I had the clutch and pressure plate aligned and installed. It was pretty easy, actually. Take the clutch disk and put the flat side down on a clean spot on your bench. Set the pressure plate on top, and move them as a unit. Set the pressure plate / clutch disk unit onto the flywheel and align the 6 bolt holes. Thread in the bolts enough so that the will hold the pressure plate on, but not in a fixed spot. Then, thread the extra output shaft (or alignment tool, if you have one) through the center until it comes to rest deep inside the flywheel. Then, tighten the bolts.

The pressure plate does not come with bolts, so I used some stainless 13mm bolts that I had from when I removed Hapy's old exhaust. Torqued to 25 ft/lbs per Kennedy instructions, and I'm ready to re-mate the engine and clutch. I have a picture of this assembled flywheel / clutch / pressure plate on my phone, but I didn't have time to sync the phone and my home computer. I'll push the picture up tonight, if I remember.

More next time...