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Date:         Sun, 6 Dec 1998 02:33:31 EST
Reply-To:     Noganav@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Andrew Martin <Noganav@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Flywheel, crankshaft shims,
              and seal - was; oil leak between eng & trans
Comments: To: vanagon@VANAGON.COM
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

For those who have just joined this thread;

My '87 Vanagon Syncro (175K) developed a major oil leak coming from between the engine and transmission. The oil leak started out rather small and grew into a flood over a three day time period. Yesterday I removed the engine and upon separating it from the transmission about a quart or so of oil gushed onto the carport floor. After cleaning up the mess and I began to look over the general condition of my engine. (It looks so small sitting on the floor of the carport as opposed to being stuffed into the engine compartment.) The first thing I noticed was the surprising amount of crankshaft end play. By eye, it looked like the flywheel, when pulled and pushed back and forth, moved in and out a 1/4 inch! It was dark and cold so I thought I would call it a night and regroup in the morning with my brother and his dial gauge. That brings us to today. First on the list was to measure the actual end play of the crankshaft. It was not 1/4 inch as I feared but 40/1000 or .0040 . A considerable amount and a bad sign but not as bad as I originally thought. My brother didn't like the way things were going and started talking about engine rebuild costs. I say let's pull the flywheel and have a closer look. I don't have a fancy flywheel locking tool so to hold the flywheel still when loosening the flywheel bolts we used a 3/4 x 3/4 x 36" piece of angle iron. We drilled two holes in it that correspond with two of the pressure plate mounting bolt holes. Using the same bolts that hold the pressure plate to the flywheel, we then attached the angle iron directly to the flywheel, like a lever or a crude handle. Next I held the angle iron in one hand and the socket wrench with an Allen head socket in the other and push and pulled then against each other. It worked great! I spent $6.00 on the angle iron at Coast to Coast Hardware. After loosening all then removing all of the flywheel bolts the flywheel came off with very little effort. Now the crankshaft oil seal, shims, needle bearing, and crankshaft bearing can be seen. The seal looked intact but the shims are shredded to pieces. I tried removing the oil seal with a seal prying tool but it is so brittle that it just keeps breaking the outside edge. I decide to use a small hammer and a small screwdriver to get under the outside edge of the seal. Then by tapping gently on the handle of the screwdriver I was able to carefully cut the edge of the seal with the straight blade of the screwdriver. I then used needlenose pliers to get hold of one side of the now split seal and pull it out. I was very careful not to gouge or score case where the seal seals. As I wrote earlier, two of the three shims are shredded and the thrust washer is worn unevenly. Furthermore, upon closer inspection, there is no felt washer to be found and the crankshaft side of the flywheel has been damaged beyond reuse. With .0040 of end play on the crankshaft, there must have been a whole of bumping and grinding going on in there. It seems likely that the broken pieces shims began cutting into the seal until it failed completely causing all that 20-50wt to flow into the clutch housing then onto the exhaust system and the ground.

Pages 13.39 to 13.41 of the Bentley Manual show the parts and pieces I have been working on.

Monday I begin my quest for a new flywheel, shims, and thrust washer. Please note that I will also be replacing the crankshaft oil seal, o-ring, needle bearing, and felt washer. It was running great so I'm hoping that by putting it all back together correctly with new parts will buy me some more miles before the inevitable engine rebuild.

Has anyone had this experience with shredded shims and damaged flywheel?

Thanks for staying with this post this far,

Andrew


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