Not only Independence Day, celebrating our freedom from the Britts,
but I’m celebrating the flywheel coming off! Whooo Hoooo!
First rule in being "cheap" is to never throw anything away.
I dug thru my bucket of pullers I’ve been collecting the
last 40 years. While I didn’t find an OMC out of the box puller,
I found an old, old wheel puller, whose plate was about 5/8"
thick. Drilled three oversize 1/4" holes in it to match up to flywheel,
and put a new point on the bolt in the lathe.
While the puller bolt wasn’t fine thread, it’s size and
never seize made it turn okay. The end of my 18" breaker
bar fit nice in one of the puller "wheel bolt" holes, to be
used as a handle while tightening the bolt. Popped off in
about 20 seconds whereas I played around off and on all
day yesterday with my harmonic balancer puller.
Just confirms that "bigger is better".
I did have one senior moment in the project…. I made three spacers
out of aluminum tubing to put on the bolts so I couldn’t screw them too
far into the flywheel. Thought I was pretty smart until I started
tighten the puller bolt and wondering why it was turning so easy.
I was crushing the aluminum tubing. 🙄
Substituted nuts for tubing and things went better!
Wanted to get some proper length, hardened bolts, but alas,
the local hardware store was closed today.
Glad it came off so I can tinker with the points and clean
out all the metal scrap from installing the heli-coil.
Hope you have an equally happy 4th!
Attachments:
Prepare to be boarded!