Hard to imagine, but we were only 50 miles or so from disaster coming home from vacation and the 2010 IDI Weekend.
Matthias called me last Saturday morning as he was on his way to do some volunteer work and described to me what sounded like a major drivetrain malfunction. My first though was that the lucky mod came apart. I would need to get a trailer and go get the Night Moose. Upon arrival a couple hours later, I got under the truck and asked him to crank it. The truck has never had an inspection plate, so the flywheel was easy to see. All the lucky mod bolts were intact. As he spun it, it made a weird sound, almost like a dynamo or something, the flywheel turned and things "looked" normal, but he complained of a soft clutch pedal. I opened the hood and had him crank it again. This time, I heard the noise, but NOTHING WAS MOVING up front! Holy kaniption fit batman! This was the first time I thought about having a broken crank. I prayed it was the flywheel bolts, but I couldn't figure why that would be. We used new bolts, and torqued them to spec. Half a day later, we had the trans off, and this is what we saw....
Yup. The flywheel just came off with the ZF. Sheared all 9.
Well that was a relief sort of. It would take us the rest of the afternoon and evening to get the broken pieces drilled and EZ outted. Just when the end was in sight, we lost the dang tang and spring putting the top cover back on the trans, and ended up draining it, pulling it, rolling it around on the floor and beating it sensless untill the 2 errant parts fell out. By then it was time to call it a night. We made attempt #2 to put the trans back in the next day, and got it buttoned up. Whew.....
Matthias called me last Saturday morning as he was on his way to do some volunteer work and described to me what sounded like a major drivetrain malfunction. My first though was that the lucky mod came apart. I would need to get a trailer and go get the Night Moose. Upon arrival a couple hours later, I got under the truck and asked him to crank it. The truck has never had an inspection plate, so the flywheel was easy to see. All the lucky mod bolts were intact. As he spun it, it made a weird sound, almost like a dynamo or something, the flywheel turned and things "looked" normal, but he complained of a soft clutch pedal. I opened the hood and had him crank it again. This time, I heard the noise, but NOTHING WAS MOVING up front! Holy kaniption fit batman! This was the first time I thought about having a broken crank. I prayed it was the flywheel bolts, but I couldn't figure why that would be. We used new bolts, and torqued them to spec. Half a day later, we had the trans off, and this is what we saw....
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Yup. The flywheel just came off with the ZF. Sheared all 9.
Well that was a relief sort of. It would take us the rest of the afternoon and evening to get the broken pieces drilled and EZ outted. Just when the end was in sight, we lost the dang tang and spring putting the top cover back on the trans, and ended up draining it, pulling it, rolling it around on the floor and beating it sensless untill the 2 errant parts fell out. By then it was time to call it a night. We made attempt #2 to put the trans back in the next day, and got it buttoned up. Whew.....
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