>>The earlier ring gear was pressed onto the flywheel (what an
>>engineereing faux pas that would appear to be),
>How so, Rich ? It was lighter and less expensive, which would seem to
be
>desirable traits. Harder to change the ring gear certainly, but not
>impossible by any means. You break the old one off, and then use heat
to
>shrink the new one into place.
Randall, a lightweight flywheel? The flywheel works by being heavy and
creating lots of angular momentum to keep the engine running smoothly.
If the bolts make it too heavy then machine the flywheel a bit smaller
first.
The design is bad because a direct shear force is applied by design to
stress a joint held only by friction. Failure of the joint has the
potential to be catastophic because a slip could break teeth or fracture
the ring gear. Pressing a bearing race into a flange is fine, almost no
friction applied to stress the joint. But I would see a friction fit as
a bad choice for the ring gear even if a failure never occurred in early
production.
I appreciate the notion that many changes probably happened to these
cars before they came to us. I guess this is part of the interest we
have in them. I am very grateful to you and the whole group for sharing
your expertise in helping keep these wonderful machines on the road
where the belong.
I will be putting in my new starter in on Friday so my son can drive
his date to a high school dance this weekend. Now there wil be one happy
teenager...
Check out the new British Cars Forum:
http://www.team.net/the-local/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=8
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