Hapy's Flywheel Needs Dentures

This last year has been distraction-filled at least with regards to my loving on my cars. We don't have a garage and we don't really even have a driveway. We have a small square patch of concrete just outside the garage door. Between that and the street are wood chips on dirt. Added to that was this recurring issue with Hapy not starting, I did not have much motivation. I did not want to lie in the mud, or work in the rain. So, I didn't. Instead, I focused on getting a garage built. Well, it's getting to nice weather again, and it would be great to have Hapy running. So, I looked back on the posts over the last year and I only lightly mentioned the recurring no-start or starting challenges in passing during the Road Report from 2024 Four Peaks. So, there's more story there. Today, I'll fill in the history and diagnosis.

 

Flat Beddin

ready for work

I mentioned that I drove Hapy, loaded with gear, to a Sunkicks show and after-party last June. That was actually the last show with all of the original members, but I digress. The prior year I had been having sporadic not wanting to start issues that I thought I had traced to the Injection Pump (IP) leaks. While the leaking IP was part of the problem, 12 years of ongoing Hapy-won't-start-easily issues has brought a cost. So, he didn't start the following day and he was towed home. I replaced the starter, he fired up, but I had little faith in him. So, for the 4Peaks trip (See 2024 4Peaks Road Report), we did not shut him off when we hit rest areas or whatever, and only had to start him twice the entire trip: once to leave the Winco parking lot and once to leave the 4Peaks camping lot. Both times he started with little fanfare.

 

Once.. Twice... Three Times a Starter

bad teeth

After we returned home, however, he would not start again. I did all that work with the doors (see The Doors) and the door cards (See Door Cards), believing that the new starter was all I needed. Wrong. The next time I went to start him was to take a road trip, again, loaded with gear. Nope. Afterwards, I tried replacing the starter, and had the same issue. I tried with a couple of other ones over the winter, thinking that I was just getting garbage starters. I replaced the transaxle -to- starter adapter, thinking it was the starter not engaging with the ring gear on the flywheel, but peeking through the starter hole did not reveal much.... until this last time (Sat, 24-May). After removing the starter for what felt like the 50th time, I got my phone up in there and took a picture of the ring gear on the flywheel. You can see in the picture on the right here, it's badly chewed up with many broken teeth. So, we have to lower the engine/transaxle, separate them so I can remove the flywheel and send it down to Kennedy Engineering in Southern California to have the ring gear replaced... if it can be replaced. Some of their older flywheels were all one unit, and this one is approaching 20 years old. A replacement flywheel with ring gear installed is a 4 week wait and $215US while getting the ring gear removed and replaced is 2 weeks and $40US (an additional $45US to have the flywheel resurfaced, if needed). I am hoping the ring gear can be separated. Otherwise, we lose all of June.

 

What a Drag

Nina's temporary home

Last Fall, when I was unable to get Hapy running, I hooked a tow chain to the front and hauled him around the back of the farmhouse. He was left parked on a bed of wood-chips and over time he was sinking into the ground. It got to the point that this last time I went to R&R the starter, I could barely get under the rear sway bar. Boo and I decided that doing an in-place engine drop there would not be fruitful, so we again hooked up a tow chain, this time to Hapy's rear. With Boo driving the truck, I steered Hapy backwards out of the yard, through the fence and out onto the street. Our plan was to roll downhill about 50 feet and then drive the truck in nose-first, dragging Hapy into the driveway where we would push him onto the concrete slab in front of the garage. Boo suggested I try to roll-start him. She figured, if we have to tow him all the way up the hill, it's not really any different than the 50 feet we were already going to do. So, we unhooked the tow chain and let gravity (and some Boo-shoving) get him rolling. I put Hapy into 3rd (kept poppin out of 2nd), and after some rough revs he fired up. I drove him down the street, and within 10 meters the black smoke stopped and the engine settled. I turned around triumphant to a dancing-in-the-street Boo. With her help I backed him onto the concrete pad, leaving about half a meter between his rear and the garage door. It was only for a few minutes, but dang I miss driving him. So much fun.

 

With Hapy in place, I used the tow chain and the come-along to move Nina, the 1964 VW Beetle into the spot where Hapy was. This cleared the rear pathway back to where the shop is going too. I wrapped the weekend with Hapy's usual spring wash. Next weekend starts the engine/transaxle drop. The following week I will send the flywheel off to Kennedy. It will be 2-4 weeks before I have a replacement in hand.

 

That's it for now. We expect the excavation work for the shop to start this week. It will be interesting to see whether we have a shop, or if Hapy is running again first. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Snap Ring Pliers review

I don't usually review tools.  Usually, I research a bunch and then pick whatever the interweb tells me to buy.  I wasn't able to get a good direction from the web for Snap Ring Pliers, so I bought a couple pairs and experimented.  Today's brief post summarizes those experiments.

Why Bother?

In my previous post, I talked about solving a leaking oil seal.  Some of my research on that issue pointed me to believe that the input shaft was loose and needed to be removed and re-installed.  To do that, a circlip needs to be backed off so a thick lock-ring can be pulled back (see picture to the right. The input shaft rises from the center of the picture to the left).  Then, the input shaft can be threaded off the reverse gear.  First step in that process requires a pair of Snap Ring Pliers.

Size
Some things about the old Volksies are very well documented on the web.  Arguably, some are over documented.  If you want to know what kind of oil to run, for example, you can go through literally hundreds of opinions.  Tires are equally well-opinion'd.  Getting something as simple as the size of the tip needed to remove the circlip on the input shaft, however, can sometimes prove impossible.  Hours of searching netted no useful information.  The size is 0.07 (US), by the way.  This is the largest size available in the standard multi-tip Snap Ring Pliers sets, and individual pliers with fixed-size tips can be found.

NAPA

boink! tip fail.

Off to the friendly local auto parts store (FLAPS), I went to find a pair that would work.  Since I'm only really doing this once, I didn't want a spendy pair, just some that would do the job.  So, I tried the tip-adjustable set available at NAPA.  Using the largest tip (0.07), I was unable to open the circlip wide enough to get the circlip out of its seating channel without the tip failing.  The tips are held on with small Phillips head bolts pressing a removable plate against the plier arm.  The removable plate is slightly bent, presumably to best fit the tip on, but the engineering is flawed such that the final bit of torque needed to hold the tip is robbed from you by the curve of the plate.  Neat.  I tried to undermine that torque-robbery by jamming a finish nail under the plate on the opposite side of the bolt, increasing the torque on the tip.  That didn't work either.

mod no worky

Net-result: not good for this job.  Maybe, if the circlip you need to remove requires less than 10 foot-pounds of torque it would suffice, but for real automotive situations, its junk.

Husky
After setting the NAPA pliers aside, I hit Home Depot looking for a pair of Husky one-size-only 0.07 Snap Ring Pliers.  While their web site showed that they were in stock at the store (for $13), neither I nor the clerk could find them.  I'd love to review them, but instead I offer just a head-shaking at Home Depot.  Either offer the product or don't; don't post it on your web site if you don't have it.  Boo.

Channel Lock

Channel Lock works!

Home Depot did have Channel Lock 927 Snap Ring Pliers (for, like $23).  These are multi-tip pliers like the NAPA ones, but are clearly better made.  They are much heavier.  They have a flip-switch to set inner or outer ring direction.  Oh, they're made in the US, so somewhere my countryman benefited from my buying them, so that's nice.  But do they work for this?  Why, yes, they do.  Unlike the NAPA pair, the ring easily opened up enough to slip out of the channel and out of the way.  Like the NAPA, Channel Lock 927's are sold with a collection of smaller tips, and are delivered with the largest (0.07) already installed.  This made the test easy, removing the possibility of me putting the tips in wrong.  I didn't bother removing and re-installing to see how bad it was, but the engineering is very different.  Unlike the NAPA which has a plate screwed on, leveraging the friction created to hold the tip in place, the Channel Lock has a hole in the plier arm to slide the tip into.  The securing bolt simply prevents the tip from falling out, so the arms need to be able to support far less torque.  The arms are much thicker too, implying that they can handle far more pressure than the NAPA tool could.

In the end, I didn't need to remove and re-install my input shaft.  After I installed the oil slinger and input shaft seal (see: Transaxle Re-Assembled), I re-tested the wiggle in the input shaft.  It barely moved.  I concluded that the input shaft was appropriately loose, and some additional digging into theSamba verified that conclusion.  I'm keeping the Channel Lock's with the car tools, and returning the NAPA's.

That's it for today.  I'm working on a post summarizing the engine-trans re-mating as well as the adventure of raising the engine-tranny unit back into the bus.