FE Power Forums
FE Power Forums => FE Technical Forum => Topic started by: Bolted to Floor on May 08, 2020, 10:12:54 AM
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Hi Guys, it looks like I need to get some alignment pins to make this work. Can I get some feed back on how I went about this and if it looks like I went about it correctly? The paint was cleaned off the back of the block. The flywheel was torqued then one bolt removed to set the dial indicator base.
First round by clock positions
12= .000”
3= .014”
6= .006”
9= -.008”
12= .000”
Second time around
12= .000”
3= .014”
6= .007”
9= -.008”
12= .000”
With the TKO 600, it allows .005” and going through Modern Driveline’s tech files, they say any needle movement over .010 will require alignment pins. Looks like I’m good on the 12-6 position, but the 3-9 position shows .022”.
So, what size pins should I get?
I found this chart online after some Googling. It was also include on the Installation instructions I downloaded for the bell housing after I first asked.
Total Indicator Reading One-Half Total Indicator Reading Dowel Size to Use Lakewood Offset Dowel Pt.# GM .625" Lakewood Offset Dowel Pt.# Ford/Mopar .500"
.012"-.020" .006"-.010" .007" LAK-15920 LAK-15950LKW
.022"-.034" .011"-.017" .014" LAK-15930 LAK-15960LKW
.036"-.052" .018"-.026" .021" LAK-15940 LAK-15970
Is there a preferred brand?
I bought pins from RobbMc Performance. The flats sticking out past the bell housing made them easy to adjust.
And what is the trick to removing the existing pin by the starter?
Edit to add info
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Might want to try again after loosening the bolts and giving it a thump with a dead blow or rubber mallet the way you want it to go. Torque, order of tightening etc can make a huge difference on the old Lakewood’s. I often get them right and then drill and pin they move so much. QT is likely better but you never know
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I'd play with clocking that locator ring a bit, I bet you could get it closer. I'd start with clocking it 180.
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OK guys, I will give both options a try. Thanks.
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Might want to try again after loosening the bolts and giving it a thump with a dead blow or rubber mallet the way you want it to go. Torque, order of tightening etc can make a huge difference on the old Lakewood’s. I often get them right and then drill and pin they move so much. QT is likely better but you never know
x2 on drilling and pinning. Definitely keeps things in place and easier for the next time..
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Soft blow hammer and clocking the inner ring didn't get me enough movement. I have ordered a set of .014 pins. Thanks for the help.
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Something to think about: your numbers don't add up so, your bell housing hole is not round, at least when bolted down. Your bell is off .003 in the Y axis and .011 in the X.
You need to measure the pilot on the trans and the hole, in the bell housing, to see how much clearance there is. When installed the weight is in the vertical plane so, if the hole to trans pilot is more than .010 - .012, it won't meet specs, unless it bolted with some jack pressure or let down on the rear mount with some weight on it. In the X, you might want to epoxy some shims to the sides of the trans pilot.
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You need to measure the pilot on the trans and the hole, in the bell housing, to see how much clearance there is. When installed the weight is in the vertical plane so, if the hole to trans pilot is more than .010 - .012, it won't meet specs, unless it bolted with some jack pressure or let down on the rear mount with some weight on it. In the X, you might want to epoxy some shims to the sides of the trans pilot.
The hole in the bell is with .002 of being round bolted to the block checking from several angles. The quoted stuff doesn’t make sense to me. Thanks for the reply.
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Here is the pins I used and they work great and you can remove the Bellhousing with out disturbing the the location of the pins. So it's set it once and forget it.
https://www.robbmcperformance.com/products/dowels.html
The hardest part is removing the hardened ones that have been in there over the years. I had to borrow a Pin puller from my buddy and even that was tuff. The pin puller is like a slide hammer but you have a collet to lock onto your pin, got to make it German tight on the pin (goodentight )
I set my bell a touch high knowing the weight of the transmission would lay on the bottom of the hole....Hope that helps
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I was doing the same job today. Used some Lakewood .021 offset dowels and got my North/ South to .004 and East/West to .002.
Couple suggestions, if you did not torque your bell to specs before running your dial indicator you will not get the real numbers.
When you get your new offset pins roll them around on something flat and establish the point that has the max offset. Mark that point on the edge of the outer circumference with a sharpie, then you will have a max clocking reference point. I had to use the max offset on those .021 dowels to get those numbers. My North/South was decent to start with but East/West was way off.
Good luck,
JB
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I’ve been fighting this same task for nearly two months. I am finally within a few thousands everywhere. Here is what I learned:
1. Start with checking the actual flywheel for run out. If flywheel has a ton of run out it will give you crazy numbers when checking the concentric. Don’t just assume that because you’ve had it machined that it is OK.
2. Next check that when bolted to the block - the bellhousing is actually parallel to the block. This too will throw of your concentric.
3. Last - check the concentric run out.
I will also say that when removing 1 bolt from flywheel may work - I found minor differences when I also removed an opposing bolt from opposite side.
Two months later - I had to have the flange side of my new flywheel dressed, bought offset dowels, and a little machining on a bellhousing that was nearly 800 bucks. Very frustrating to say the least.
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That sucks Dennis, is that a new Quick Time unit? If so, is the fork opening location going to play nice in the intended vehicle?
Good luck,
JB
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Thanks for the feed back guys. it's very much appreciated.
I did manage to get the driver side pin out. vise grips alone didn't work. It was too hard to drill..... when I center punched it for the drill bit, it went about 1/8". :o Not what i wanted to happen. I didn't get enough heat into it to kill the hardness of it or heat in the block to allow it to pull out either.
In the end, I drilled a hole to tap and shoot it out with grease. Since I measured wrong and wasn't past the end of it, I had to angle the drill to get to past the end. This time, a barely made it. I used a tapered punch to to drive in behind it which drove the pin out some. Tapping on the shaft of the punch got it out some more. After that, it was a combination of vise grips and used the punch as a lever to final remove it.
This bell housing and flywheel were on the last motor and it was within tolerance when I checked for the 005". This is a different block and crank.
I haven't been checking the torque on the bell to block bolts. I've been using a battery impact, it's should get to the 35-45 listed in the instructions for the bell. I will have to check that.
Marking the high side of the offset pins, got it.
Towd56, I feel for ya. I have a few hours invested and don't want to imagine what its been like for you over the last couple of months dealing with it. I have checked for run out around the circumference of the flywheel. I did check the face at the edge where the clutch disc rides. It was .007 there. The Blue allows up to .010.
All of this was done with the motor beside the car hanging from the engine hoist. Since I am impatient, the motor was set in down in the car yesterday. I will have to finish up from underneath. I am proceeding with the headers and front engine dress. I have a note to self to mark the balancer so I know where to stop when I get back to taking readings again. That way I only crawl once for each reading!!!
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Yeah, I had to index mine with the engine in the car. Yikes! Not the easiest job doing by myself and all the crawling in/out. What a pain!
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The other factor is the crankshaft main bearings have clearances.
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John D, this Innovators West balancer comes in handy for indexing jobs.
I know you are impatient and started putting the motor in but I got bit big time last year by a trans that would not get “ home” into the pilot bushing. So all those installs get proofed on the shop floor first. Sure as s!&t the trans would not go in easily this time either. The plastic alignment tool did not get it done, ended up aligning the disc to PB with the trans with the bell off just to prove it could be done. (I was careful to keep weight off clutch hub and had a floor jack underneath trans). I only had to hump trans in and out 7 times. I call that a bargain compared to fighting it from under the car.
I hope you fare better.
JB
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That sucks Dennis, is that a new Quick Time unit? If so, is the fork opening location going to play nice in the intended vehicle?
Good luck,
JB
It’s a new QuickTime and no - I had to make some modifications as fork opening is about an inch lower than factory bell.
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Thanks for the feed back guys. it's very much appreciated.
I did manage to get the driver side pin out. vise grips alone didn't work. It was too hard to drill..... when I center punched it for the drill bit, it went about 1/8". :o Not what i wanted to happen. I didn't get enough heat into it to kill the hardness of it or heat in the block to allow it to pull out either.
In the end, I drilled a hole to tap and shoot it out with grease. Since I measured wrong and wasn't past the end of it, I had to angle the drill to get to past the end. This time, a barely made it. I used a tapered punch to to drive in behind it which drove the pin out some. Tapping on the shaft of the punch got it out some more. After that, it was a combination of vise grips and used the punch as a lever to final remove it.
This bell housing and flywheel were on the last motor and it was within tolerance when I checked for the 005". This is a different block and crank.
I haven't been checking the torque on the bell to block bolts. I've been using a battery impact, it's should get to the 35-45 listed in the instructions for the bell. I will have to check that.
Marking the high side of the offset pins, got it.
Towd56, I feel for ya. I have a few hours invested and don't want to imagine what its been like for you over the last couple of months dealing with it. I have checked for run out around the circumference of the flywheel. I did check the face at the edge where the clutch disc rides. It was .007 there. The Blue allows up to .010.
All of this was done with the motor beside the car hanging from the engine hoist. Since I am impatient, the motor was set in down in the car yesterday. I will have to finish up from underneath. I am proceeding with the headers and front engine dress. I have a note to self to mark the balancer so I know where to stop when I get back to taking readings again. That way I only crawl once for each reading!!!
One last thing I forgot to tell you - it looks like you are using a QT bell. If you are also using their spacer plate - my plate did not have one of the holes drilled in it to clearance the oil galley plugs in the rear of the block. Make sure your plate is not hanging up on those plugs if your block has them.
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JB, that’s a snazzy looking balancer and I bet it helped greatly for taking the readings in the same spot. Since I opted to have a factory balance redone, I’m gonna be taking a slightly lower tech approach with blue painters tape, a clothes hanger pointer and a Sharpie. ::)
I hope my excitement and rush doesn’t bite me in the back side for getting it back in the car. With the first motor when I went to install it, it was bolted to the transmission and the headers were on it. I don’t know if it was the FPA headers or me or the angle car but it didn’t want to go in like that. So I took off the passenger side header and we were able to wiggle it into the car. I have since figured out that I union one motor mount use a hoist to tilt the motor to the side and you can wiggle a header in from the bottom and that’s my method of install. In late 2018 I had issues with the hydraulic throw out bearing and it basically adjusted itself out to the point that it caused seal to push out and I lost all the brake fluid. When I got everything back together it took me an extremely long time to finally get the clutch pedal bled out again. Like 6 to 8 hours worth of time to do all that. So this time I did not disconnect the lines on the hydraulic throughout bearing. I will fight with it up under the car and I put it all together and see if there’s less pain and anguish than trying to get the air out of it!!
It’s is a QuickTime bell and the spacer plate had the holes so, I was good there. I got it back in 2013 and the starter bolts are 3/8x16. Hope they got that straightened out by now.
Thanks for the feedback guys.
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The pins from RobbMc Performance arrived last night. For the set I got, the high side was marked with the part number. I don’t know that all are that way, but these were. They slipped into the block without issue. The flats made them easy to adjust.
Working under the car was a pain, but manageable. Once the dial indicator was set I slide in from the front of the car and just slide back & forth while I made index marks on the blue tape around balancer for taking the measurements. After the first round, I turned both to see what happened and decided it would be a good idea to track where the high spots were. After that, I turned one to see the results.
On the forth time around, I hit pay dirt and it come into spec.
Thanks for the help and feedback. ;D ;D
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Were you working off the flywheel? I know you we’re putting stuff together earlier so curious if you found a way to dial with clutch in there.
I made a little line up mark with the dowels and bell once I had it where I liked it just in case the dowels walk.
JB
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It’s is a QuickTime bell and the spacer plate had the holes so, I was good there. I got it back in 2013 and the starter bolts are 3/8x16. Hope they got that straightened out by now.
Nope. Mine is dated 2017, when I bought it and I found out the same thing when I went to install the starter in the car. I used 3/4" long 3/8" hex headed header bolts. Works perfect.
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Were you working off the flywheel? I know you we’re putting stuff together earlier so curious if you found a way to dial with clutch in there.
I made a little line up mark with the dowels and bell once I had it where I liked it just in case the dowels walk.
JB
I was working off the flywheel. Wrestled that bell up in there and worked the pins till I got it right, then tightened up the allens to lock them in place and checked again. Since it stayed while tightening the allens, I will have to assume it will stay for the removal of the bell and install of the clutch and that flywheel bolt I had removed.
It would have been nice to do all of this with the clutch already installed.
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It’s is a QuickTime bell and the spacer plate had the holes so, I was good there. I got it back in 2013 and the starter bolts are 3/8x16. Hope they got that straightened out by now.
Nope. Mine is dated 2017, when I bought it and I found out the same thing when I went to install the starter in the car. I used 3/4" long 3/8" hex headed header bolts. Works perfect.
I never thought about header bolts.... it would have been faster than what I did and saved a trip to the hardware store. It's a pan head allen with flats ground on it and part of the shaft threaded to 5/16.