Re: Flywheel Resurfacing

Posted by Kevin Daly on May 29, 1998 at 10:27:03

In Reply to: Re: Flywheel Resurfacing
posted by Joe on May 29, 1998 at 10:12:59

: Kevin
: How do you know you have to resurface the flywheel?
: In a previous posting of mine I discussed (along with about 15 others) the lack of "care & feeding" information on the single plate clutch in the published Model A literature.Many of these others wrote replies which further added to my knowledge on this subject. (thanks, all!)
Thanks for the advise Joe.Your points are well taken.I will take a closer look and rethink my decision.God knows I have countless other areas of my car on which to empty my wallet!
: One of the things I brought to the discussion was the comment that because not much is widely known about the clutch/flywheel/pressureplate assembly, a lot of restorers are pretty much at the mercy of service people who allegedly do know.I called this "technical intimidation".
: My thought at the time was that a lot of rebuilt pressure plates are sold and a lot of flywheels turned without good cause.Some of the other respondants agreed, nobody outright disagreed. I was reassured to see that one of these was extremely well known in the Model A fraternity.
: I hope if you are going to reface your flywheel it is because of some major upset to the normally flat surface.About the only reason I could imagine is that your clutch has been subject to extreme wear and the brass rivets that normally hold the clutch facing to the disk have worn annular grooves in the flywheel.Another possible reason is to true the surface relative to the crankshaft axis or crankshaft mounting flange which would indicate a large change in flywheel dimension possibly caused by heat over time.(The warped flywheel effect - very rare!)
: Others have inquired about cracks or checks in the surface of the flywheel clutch face.These are caused by the normal action of the clutch causing localized heating.The cracks, unless really severe, are not of consequence and if you machine them out, they will quickly reappear anyway.
: The truth is, in machining the surface of the flywheel, you are cutting down on the useful life of the flywheel.When you machine it, you are duplicating the action of years of service of the clutch disk.Also, you get into the problems of the dimensional tolerences of the clutch and pressure plate assembly: you allude to this in your question.(Yes, I believe you want to maintain the dimension if you can but a small change can be accomodated in the pressure plate adjustments when you set it up.)
: There are cases where machining is necessary.I have described at least two.But not that many - and I hate to see another wallet emptied for no reason and another Model A flywheel that much further to becoming an import car.
: Oh, incidently the posting where all this got discussed previously was removed in one of Dale's periodic editing sessions, apparently a necessity because of the voluminous size of the board history.
: Hope this helps you.
: Best regards,
: Joe

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