<VV> Flywheel questions

[JVHRoberts at aol.com]

In my experience, failure of the rivets has been always inevitable. Perhaps  
it's the BIG torque of a modified turbo engine that accelerates it, but the  
rivets were always a lousy idea. 
 
In a message dated 2/16/2008 6:12:53 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
r.gault at sbcglobal.net writes:

Well,  one general principle is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
If you were  looking for the maximum likelyhood of not having a problem with
your car,  you probably wouldn't be driving a 40 year old car.

The rivets don't  fail from age, they fail from use.  Ask yourself:
How much mileage is  on the car?
How much do you put on it a year?
I ran my original flywheel  over 200K miles before I replaced it because
everybody told me to.   Wonder if it would still be fine at the current 296K?

You know, those  riveted dudes do fail, but they don't generally do anything
catastrophic  before the warn you with plenty of rattling noises.  On the
other  hand, how many times have you done some simple job and had some
surprise  turn it into a nightmare?  New flywheels are not zero risk
(although I  got mine from Dale's and David does really great work).  How
happy  would you be if you took your perfectly good one out and put one in
that  was out of balance?  Or had the ring welded on wrong so it  ate
starters?  What if you tore up a flywheel bolt?  What if your  wrench slipped
of that PITA thin bolt head on the flywheel bolt and you  lost your balance
and fell backwards against the wall and your extension  ladder was jarred off
the brackets it's hanging on and fell through your  windshield, sending a
shower of tiny glass cubes in the open window of your  wife's car and the
next time she sat in the car she cut her butt and made  you sell the Corvair?

As for doing it later  --  It takes me  about 6 hours to remove the whole
drivetrain, split apart and replace the  flywheel, and replace the
drivetrain - way easier than trying to split it  in the car.  (others  may
disagree)

Roger


 



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