Trojan Boat Forum

Well now I am faced with a moved ring gear on my 318 so next Saturday we will move v-drive back, remove bell housing and change flywheel.

There is another thread regarding this quite a while back by G36. I gave some steady as to why this happens and think I have the root cause.

These flywheels are the same one used for Chrysler clutched type drive train, exactly the same. In a motor vehicle the starter is found under the passenger side bank of cylinders. The starter is inserted from the front of the engine. The ring gear on the flywheel is also pressed onto the flywheel from the front side of the engine until it hits the shoulder and stops.

Now comes the marine starter which is inserted from the rear of the bell housing. Every time a start is happens the starter bendix tosses the pinion gear out into the ring gear and turns the engine. Over time I suspect the starter hitting the teeth when the bendix moves the pinion forward can eventually start the movement of the ring gear as there is not shoulder to resist movement like as in a motor vehicle. Seems to me it is basically a design oversight from the marine mfgs and I will bet you this applies to most or all of the other non Chrysler mfgs as well.

Gonna fix mine and tack weld it in six to eight evenly spaced sites. Should never move then.

Tack weld is the fix .

prowlersfish wrote:Tack weld is the fix .

Wouldn't these welds throw the rotating assembly out of balance?

Paul good question . I never had a issue but I always was even in my tack locations and size . How much does a small tack weld weight ? How well is the engine balanced to begin withfrom the factory ? I don't believe it would effect Balance Tolerances to any big degree .

Nor do I think balance will be a prob.

Evenly spaced it should be no chore to apply close to equal tacks. I will let you know if there is a problem afterword, I do not anticipate one.

I had thought of it as well but simple enough tack weld using the six bolt holes in flywheel face.

It is now fixed with tack welded flywheel. I would not wish this job on an enemy. My son and I pulled the F28 vdrive and all related parts, got it back together and now no problem. Ring gear had walked about 3/8 inch on the old one. Took a total of about 10 hours and am still drinking afterward.

Did not take any pictures, I just want to forget about this job.

On another issue regarding technicians, paid 10K to install engines and dripless shaft seals, one set screw in each coupler and one of them not tight. Only one set screw in the dripless shaft seal, calls for two wit a 3 and 4th jamming set screw. By the way this was on both engines. Everything I work on this boat I find lack of attention by the technician. I will never use them again and am going to fire off a letter to the head guy, a waste of time but gonna do it anyway.

Oh yes my bilge magnets are still fully functional! even with batteries out of boat!