Here's how I address the flywheel nut:

Insert two long bolts into the flywheel at, say, 10 and 3 O'clock. You want about 1" sticking out toward you.

Now, place a long bar across the top of one bolt, and running tightly under the other bolt. The other end is wedged against the floor. The longer the bar, the less tendency the motor has to try to tip over on you. Have a freind stand on the end against the floor, while you apply long bar pressure to the flywheel bolt in the opposite direction.

That's how you do it with whatever's laying aroung the garage.

P.S. The concept of using bolts, or sometimes just the heads of the bolts, in conjunction with a cross bar is useful in many other instances as well. One of those is when removing the stock fan.




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Nut is off, now who here has actually attempted "successfully" at removing the flywheel from the eccentric shaft? I have been trying to remove it with every means known to me and it will not budge....

 

I used a crowbar while knocking it with a sledgehammer.

 

ive torn down 5 engines so far and all i ever did was take a 4lb sledge and gently tap it on the sides of the flywheel. Usually after about 5 or 6 "taps" the flywheel will fall off. When i say taps, i mean gently tap.... not swing like a crazy person.

 

An old 13b of mine did this and it just took 3 people prying it with bars, pb blaster, a torch, and a hammer. It just takes a bit sometimes. My last 12a flywheel fell off as soon as I removed the nut.

 

You might want to look thru this photo-album; raw chronological step-by-step of my current pull, strip and rebuild project, still underway as we speak.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ine%20Removal/

Eventually I'm going to write it all up and caption it, but you might get some useful insights just from following the pix along.

& yes, MUCH better to loosen the front pulley bolt at the same time you've got the flywheel still on, and locked for nut removal.

 

So, We finally have the engine completely apart and broken down shotgun style, and..............it's junk, the front rotor housing is garbage. I am now in the market for a new engine, anyone have a line on one?

 

why not get a housing and re-use the rest?

 

Its not all junk! Clean up the bad half and make a display. Your not a true rotor head if you don't have a home made rotor display in your living room.

 

^ true that i have a full block that i cut the housings open so you can see everything in action

 

13X, I have looked for housings and everyone wants big money, plus the seal kit for the 12A is $1200. Seems I can get another engine (13B) for what it would cost for 1 housing and seal kit.

 

yeah you could go that way there are others locally running them, for that matter for my wifes GSL I scored a 12A from the pick a part "complete" oil pan to air filter for $250 and it ran/runs like a top

 

you don't need the $1200 kit for the engine, you can do with about half the parts for a rebuild putting most average builds at $500-600 in parts ordered. the tough part is the housings as you mentioned.

you might even consider moving to dropping a 13B into it with the mazdatrix engine mount adapter, the parts to build them are more readily available.

there is another method to replacing the long lost 12A housings which is to take some worn 13B housings and cut them down to the thickness of the 12A housings. this idea was presented to me by atkins and was not my idea initially. but to get good usable housings that way is also pricey again at about $200-300 per housing due to the labor involved in buying and cutting down the housings. upside is you get a virtually pristine housing with better chrome treatment that will last longer than the original 12A housings.

could also just grab that motor from the SA22C at the north lamb pick a part and cross your fingers. finding good usable 12A parts these days is quite tough, unfortunately i have nothing as i don't get much FB/SA work in so i have never bothered buying core motors to stock parts with(only rebuilt 2 12A engines in my life versus well over 100 13B engines).

 

Karack, I will be swinging by today to talk with you about some options, I see a couple companies that re-surface 12A housings. One company says they can possibly repair my housing, while another company says they resurface the housing with ceramic, anyone have this done?

 

even though i talked to you in person i am just mentioning here that i haven't heard of anyone successfully ceramic coating the housings aside from mazda. in their case i would say they likely skipped the chroming process and embedded the rough steel liner with cermet which will bond more readily than over the chrome plating. JHB tried and sold many housings, many also failed in a short period of time.

i can strip the housings completely down to the steel liner but i have not attempted to contract alternative coatings yet. stripping the liners is also a time consuming process.