<VV> /Sealing the flexplate bolts

[Jim Simpson]

Thanks everyone for the responses.  I did learn a bit in the subsequent
discussion.  I particularly like the idea behind the new Locktite thread
sealing/locking tape - I'll have to see if I can find some to have on hand.

 

As it turned out, we didn't touch the flexplate bolts.  The problem we were
fixing was a bad ring gear; it was missing about 4" of teeth.

 

It all started with fixing a starter problem.  Occasionally it wouldn't
engage although we found when we hand turned the engine a bit, it would
engage just fine.  When we pulled the starter, we found it had a broken nose
piece.  And when we started looking to see why the nose piece was broken, we
found that there were several missing teeth on the ring gear.  We suspect
that when the starter tried to engage on the remaining bits of teeth, there
was a lot of side impact loading on the starter nose that caused the nose
piece to break.

 

A couple people suggested that one reason for the ring gear teeth to be
broken in the first place was  a bad flex plate that was making the torque
converter either eccentric or allowing it to wobble.  So when we were
getting ready to replace the torque converter, we were also prepared to
replace the flex plate if needed.  But we checked the runout on the original
torque converter, it was within a few thousands and there was no sign of it
wobbling.  And once we had the torque converter off and could access the
flex plate, there were no signs of cracking or other damage to the flex
plate, nor any signs of it moving on the bolts to the crankshaft.  So we
decided to leave well enough alone.

 

We haven't put the drivetrain back in yet - we got caught in a "while we're
in there we ought to fix .." cycle and now are waiting on some more parts -
but I'm pretty confident that it was just a combination of other factors
than a bad flex plate that caused the teeth on the ring gear to go south.
We'll find out when we trying firing it up again.

 

Jim Simpson

Group Corvair