STARTER/FLYWHEEL QUESTION

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Franko

Franko

FABO Gold Member
FABO Gold Member
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I had my 340 rebuilt in my 69 Swinger. After 600 miles the clutch started grinding when the pedal was fully depressed. It turned out the Bell Housing was misaligned by .019” total and the clutch disc was hitting the flywheel bolts (the builder told me he aligned the BH as I requested). I should note that I have turned over the engine probably hundreds of times with a socket wrench because I had great difficulty getting the B.H. aligned with offset dowels.

I had the transmission out and before I put in another clutch, I noticed that the solenoid gear doesn’t retract from the flywheel unless I move the damper bolt slightly with a socket wrench. I’ve had the same result with another starter. Same result with the original dowels. Does this sound normal for an engine with 600 miles on it because it is still tight or do I have other issues?

Thanks for your help.
 
I had the same problem years ago with a lakewood .017 out after it was set up and it kept wiping out the pilot bushing. It had offset dowels but they just weren't the right size.
 
I don't think your starter problem has anything to do with the alignment of the bh in this case. Usually when you are cranking the engine there is enough inertia to keep the starter gear from staying engaged if the engine doesn't start.
 
This is unusual but in a way, there should be no concern, as when the engine starts, it suddenly moves faster than the starter gear and that should kick the starter gear back into its rest position. But it does sound like the starter is a bit tighter than normal to the ring gear. Are these original starters or rebuilds?

Used starters? Spray a bit of WD40 on the starter gear shaft and under the starter gear and see if it releases better. If these are older starters, it just may be that the grease on the starter gear shaft is all dried out.

Otherwise, loosen the starter bolts and try moving it out as far as you can and retighten.

And the spot where the starters mounts have known to get a bit tweaked and the starter gets a bit angled.... ask me how I know.....LOL. It is hard to find this issue. Any helicoils in the holes where the starter mounts up?
 
One starter was rebuilt a couple of years ago and I bought the other starter for $20 at the Mopar Nationals swap meet so I think it’s possible it was never rebuilt. I did try loosening the starters and retightening the bolts, but that didn’t help. And there are no helicoils in the B.H.

I took the engine out because I’m going to fix the rear main seal leak. So I thought I would check all the rod and main bearings since I have the oil pan off and reassemble with assembly lube.

Thanks again for your advice.
 
I can imagine only 4 ways for the disc to hit the flywheel bolts.
1)The bolt heads are too tall.
2)The flywheel has been resurfaced too thin
3)the front face of the disc is worn off, and
4) you are pushing the pedal too far down, and the fingers are pushing the disc back into flywheel,bending it and driving the hub into the bold heads.
Well I guess putting the disc in backwards could do it too. But that would create other issues .

You can align the BH with no dowels at all. The dowels are just there to make it repeatable so you don't have to dial it every time you take it off.Sometimes you have to "waller"(word credit to RRR) out the holes to make it fit. In your case I would check the faces for parallelism too. That is to say, that the block face is parallel to the tranny face.

If you have to push the BH over to the passenger side quite far, this will drag the starter drive into the flywheel, which might make it tend to stick. If it is also very noisy during cranking then you will have to move the starter away from the flywheel. This sounds easy, but will require some grinding and special installation instructions. It sounds to me like your crank not in the right spot. A rear main seal leak can be an indicator of that.It will be worn very oddly.Take a real good look at it. It may be very worn on the passenger side and hardly worn on the driver side. My 367 wears the rear seals this way but in a vertical direction. I have found no cure for this except to throw the block away. I've got too much into it to do that. I found that I could stuff a 383 rope seal in there and trim the ends to fit. I bought a 7qt pan and run it a qt and a half low.These changes made the leak more sufferable.But I know a certain machine shop that will never get a referral from me. It did not have this problem until they fixed it.
 
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Thanks for all the thoughts AJ/FormS. All 4 of your excellent points do not apply in my case. I ordered a 10 1/2" McLeod clutch from a distributor. In their infinite wisdom I received a scalloped pressure plate that bolts to a 10 1/2" flywheel but holds an 11" clutch disc (I think I've also seen it called 10.9"). (And I told them this is a street car and it is not raced.) I used the small head bolts that came with the kit. You can see from the attached pictures that the clutch disc hit the bolts. I think it is related to the BH being off by .019". I also noticed wear lines on the input shaft in just 600 miles and I had it replaced.

Like I said, the engine builder told me he aligned the BH. He align bored the block and I wonder if that caused these issues. I purchased this block just before it was rebuilt, and it was from a 71 Duster . I checked the BH face for flatness using a dial indicator on the crank and it was within spec. I should also note that I aligned the BH in the 10:00 position, which I thought would help the starter to disengage, not the opposite.

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Just curious, are you going to take that disc OD down 0.030" per side, leave it as is, or try to find another disc?
 
I'm going to take this clutch and pressure plate to Detroit Clutch Masters to examine everything. They said that they can make sure the pressure plate is in spec and reusable. They also told me that they can sell me a Carbon/Kevlar clutch, which in their opinion, is the best clutch disc, even for a street car. (McLeod told me that I could install a 10 1/2" clutch disc with this pressure plate.)

I should also note that when I called McLeod tech and told them about the grinding when the clutch pedal was fully depressed, they apparently never heard of the clutch hitting the pressure plate bolts. They had me send them the throw out bearing (which threw out black grease around the bell housing). They told me it was defective and sent me a new one, which of course didn't fix the problem.
 
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