The continuing saga of the TR7 with the Bearings From Hell continues....
Well, there was a delay getting the crank turned, since the T. Hoff crank man
was sick for about a week, but I finally picked it up on Friday and they only
had to take off .010, and the bill was only $60 and the crank looks fab. AND
they introduced me to PLASTIGAGE Clearance Indicators which I had never seen
before -- leading the T. Hoff guys to roll their eyes at me trying to rebuild
the TR7 -- in a half-joking sort of way.
For those of you as in-the-dark as I was, this stuff is nothing more than
what looks like a stiff piece of dental floss. you take a half-inch or so,
and place it on the inside of one of the new bearings, then put in the
crankshaft and tighten down the bolts for that one journal to the right
torque. then you take it apart again, and retrieve what is now a flattened
piece plastigage and measure its width. The more it is flattened, the less
clearance you have in the new assemble, and the TR7 manual should tell me how
much clearance I should have. In this way, you can make sure that the newly
ground crank and new bearings are going to have enough oil flow. Really neat
trick.
Apparently race car mechanics check every journal this way.
Now the bad news. I have had my first major mistake. When I took the
flywheel off, I marked it and the end of the crank with paint so I could
re-assemble it the same way. Of course the T.Hoff guys did a complete
cleaning of the crank, and the paint marks are long gone.... No wonder you
are suppose to make the mark with a chiesel...
The manual talks about checking the runout with a dial gauge when a new
flywheel is put on, so I assume there is a way for me to fix this mistake and
make sure the flywheel is re-mounted correctly?
Laughs are ok, as long as advice comes afterwards!.... And at least the
paint marks I used for the driveshaft and transmission flange are still
there!!! I don't think there were any others I needed to worry about?.....
As always, thanks for the help.
Bruce
1980 Inca Yellow TR7 5-speed convertible
Chapel Hill, NC
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