Intermediate Shaft Cleaning/Flushing

[nocarrier]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share a small experience I had while cleaning an intermediate shaft.

I did a search and haven't noticed it covered here so I hope this helps as a "heads up" for anyone rebuilding their engine.

I had removed the sprockets of my intermediate shaft and submerged it in my ultrasonic cleaner to just give it a good cleaning before putting it back together. Upon removing it from the ultrasonic tank, I flushed the oil passage ways with some brake clean and I was quite shocked at how much stuff came out.

All the dirt on the below pictures came out of the shaft after Ultrasonic Cleaning! There appears to be some small flakes of bearing material from the intermediate shaft bearings.

[nocarrier]

There is an aluminum plug inside one end of the intermediate shaft I am thinking about removing.

Has anyone removed this plug? Looks like I might have to re-make a new plug If I pull the original one out.

[MBruns]

You must clean that, It looks like a later style and that should have a snap ring and an alum plug with a 6mm threaded hole to put a random bolt into and pull it out, clean it like a pistol bore and flush the crap out. The crank is another trap that has more sludge than you would believe, and a partial clean just disturbs it enough to kill your bearings when you start up your new rebuild.

Mike Bruns JBRacing.com

[nocarrier]

Thanks for chiming in Mike, I am definitely going to pull that plug and flush it out a lot more!.

I've never seen anyone mention flushing the intermediate shaft before and after seeing what came out, I am really glad I avoided a potential premature failure!