[ischmitz]

My #8 nose bearing was leaking a bit for quite some time. Nothing wild but more of a nuisance. At some point I picked up one of these kits where a machined ring gets epoxied to the case flange in an attempt to stop the leak. Since it's less than 100$ I thought I'd give it a try. This weekend engine and transmission came out to fix the 915, perfect opportunity to install the leak-fix kit.

The harmonic balancer has to come off the crank and we used the center bolt from a standard steering wheel puller. It threads right into the balancer to push it off. Unfortunately it doesn't reach far enough into the threaded part of the crank to exert pressure. So either a small socket or something of that nature as a spacer to make it work, right.

Instead of a small socket we picked a random 20mm M4 Allen bolt and put it thread-first into the center before threading in the steering wheel puller bolt. And that turned out to be a fatal mistake. Once the impact wrench had its way the balancer didn't pop right off. When we took the large puller bolt out the small Allan bolt seemed to have punched a hole into the crank. Oh SH|T. Well not quite but it found its way into the oil galley bore and pushed the aluminum plug ~20mm into the bore. We got the small bolt out but at that point we sensed doom. With digital calipers we checked on another crank and quickly confirmed the plug went so far in that it exposed the first cross-drill for the #8 bearing supply. We tried to get a small hole drilled into the plug to try and pull it out but in the process it disappeared even further into the bore beyond reach. GAME OVER

The engine has to be torn down for the crank to come out. It needs to have all oil galleys opened and cleaned out. On a high note I will end up with a fresh motor when this is all done. And I can fix the leak properly....