I have been reading horror stories about the difficulty in removing the flywheel from old MGB engines. You need to heat it with a torch, smack it with a hammer, get a bigger hammer, swear like crazy… and the damn thing still won’t budge.
Well, here’s the scoop on my 1967 MGB GT engine. I figured that it would be a good time to remove the starter. The starter bolts came out as if they were installed yesterday, very good. I undid the six 3/4 inch bolts cursing the silly lock tabs that have to be bent out of the way. These bolt heads aren’t very deep and many people grind down a socket so the end is flat to get a better grip on them. I just went with my trusty cheap impact gun and a standard impact socket. This method removed all these bolts easily. Now the fun part… let’s get the flywheel off the crankshaft.
Get out the torch, prepare to swear, get out the sledge hammer! Actually, I wiggled the flywheel back and forth gently for about 30 seconds and it just came off, gotta like that.
Removing the engine back plate requires flattening all the lock tabs again. Boy do I hate those. Apparently lots of engine builders do away with lock tabs now and just use Loctite. Remove the millions of bolts and the back plate just slips off….
exposing the rear of the engine. This is where I’ll bolt the engine mounting plate to put the engine on a stand. So far things are looking good!
