Urgent: need help with early engine drop

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I'm pretty much done, have everything disconnected, the axles however, will not budge. On 3.2s, they just fall away, on my 69E, they seem stuck. these are the very early 4 bolt type.

Any advice is much appreciated.

[dweymer]

pb blaster, and a few heat cycles.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

thanks Donnie, no heat, but will give it a go.

[dweymer]

I used mapp gas

[dtw]

Pull all four bolts, release parking brake, twist wheels a few times, beat the hell out of the joint at the drive flange with a rubber mallet, it'll fall right off. I've never needed heat.

[Jim Sims]

Heat is not a replacement for information.

These CV joint flanges likely also have two "Spirol" pins in addition to the four bolts. One will likely need to drive them apart with a soft wedge or hammer. Sometimes on can get a start by pushing in or tearing away at the "cardboard" gasket with a chisel to make a crack to get started.

[dweymer]

Heat is for breaking the bolts, I assumed he knew the pins were there.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

thanks to Donnie, Dave and Jim for help on removing the CVs...I ended up removing all 8 bolts, then wedging the outboard CV which freed up easily leading to pulling them out from the 901 flanges. I've got to replace boots on these so another "while you're in there." I don't think these axles have ever been out of the car in it's 106K mile life.

Anyway, the motor drop was due to a terrible noise on start-up which as you can see from the pics, is certainly from a sticky pinion gear on the starter motor eating away the teeth on the flywheel.

Add one more to thousands of "thanks Grady" for that bit of info. Thanks Grady!

As you can see, most of the flywheel/ring gear teeth are completely gone. I guess Bosch uses tungsten or some other serious meta in their starter motor gears while Sachs uses left over tin from sardine cans. With all the oil about, I'm guessing it's going to need a rear main seal too.

Does anyone have some good "while you're in there" maintenance tips?

See anything that doesn't look right?

[klaucke]

While you are in there? It's a slipperly slope...
-Clutch
-Resurface flywheel
-TO bearing
-Rear main seal
-Tranny input shafter seal? Not sure if this is problematic on the 901.
-Oil T-stat seal
-Clean everything
-Lube bell crank throttle linkage
-Clean and coat tranny w/ Tectyl or similar
-Convert MFI pump to closed oil system a la Henry at Supertec by plugging lines and filling w/ synthetic oil.