Yesterday I had one goal – to remove my flywheel.   I succeeded with help from some newly bought screw/bolt remover set from Harbor Freight.  The hex bolts holding the pressure plate were covered in some tough orange sealant which made insterting a hex socket difficult; susequently, stripping the bolts.  The set worked great, I just drilled a bit into the head, hammered the remover spike in, and torqued it out with a box wrench.  Three of the six bolts needed this procedure.

 

Now that the hard part was done, the pressure plate and the clutch disk came out.  The clutch disk looked to be in decent condition.  The pressue plate surface looked OK too.

The flywheel was next.  I used my Harbor Freight impact air wrench for the bolt removal.  It worked like a charm.  All out in 1 minute.  Here she is.  Some of the pics came out blurry, argg.

So guess what I found behind the flywheel?  How fun!  More of the mysterious orange stuff.  This time covering the rear main seal.  Great.  After finding this crud around the exterior and interior oil pan bolts, it seems that a previous owner had a mechanic “take care” the leaks and/or leak prone areas.  But the RMS, c’mon!  Now this is my dilemma…do I change the seal out?  It doesn’t look like its been leaking too much.  Then again, it hasn’t been run on the street in 7 years. Maybe idling doesn’t provide enough pressure to produce a leak.  The RMS on these cars are really finicky.  Some members on s14.net say to just leave it alone if little to no oil is present. And, if you do change it, it’s not guaranteed that it’ll all be fine and dandy.  The new seal must sit on “virgin” steel for a good contact.  Oh and the seal carrier may be skewed too over time.  I don’t know…

The picture on the right is the mangled flywheel dowl pin used by the PO.

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