Eating Flywheel Teeth on a Bert

[RacerX10]

Anybody know what causes this to happen ? 2nd time it's done this to me (on 2 different cars, tho)

Thanks,

DLD

[big88fan]

a couple things
1. it has nothing to do with the trans
2. how does the reduction gear in the bell housing look "is it worn also"
3. if the other gear looks good I would suggest shimming the coupler out an 1/8 of an inch or so I think some times if you have a thicker midplate than maybe it was designed for you need to compensate by shimming the coupler out a little

[RacerX10]

I didn't look at the reduction gear yet .. I'm dreading pulling all the driveshaft / transmission / dry sump / bellhousing crap out to get to it

I do have a few shim rings behind the flywheel, maybe it needs more of them ?

[1Blacksheep]

Eat 1 just like that this summer. The shaft that the reduction gear rides on needs weekly maintenance and lubrication. Put the starter on and with a screw driver pull the bendix out to full throw and see how far it is engaging the flywheel.With shims, ours was only hitting the amount you have ground off. Modified the starter to throw further out,problem disapeared. Reduction gear is probably not hurt. Somebody at Bert forgot to engineer the motorplate thickness into the equation. Goodluck

[RacerX10]

How did you modify the starter ? If a starter mod will get it to engage the gears fully, I won't have to pull all that @#$@#ing stuff out of the car to fix this

[scrub_fan]

if you are looking at what would be the back side of the teeth than i belive that they are made like this not being ground down by the starter

[RacerX10]

I don't think so :

[9WRACER]

Be careful also as I didn't have the long alignment pins out of the back of the motor to align the bell housing with the flywheel and it drove me crazy pulling it apart and adding shims. Problem was the bell housing was moving away from the flywheel and knocking the teeth off

[1Blacksheep]

Check the throw out first.If it does not engage completely then = our starter had 3/16 " of space on the outer most part of starter gear,take off and stretch the spring underneath and then grind that 3/16 off almost to the teeth. (Or) Bert has alot of meat on the Bell housing at the starter mount area, have a machine shop mill 3/16 to a 1/4" off the area where the starter mounts. The part of the fltwheel you ground off is beveled already for smooth engagement (which is all you are using right now), It only has to slip once and the grinding issue begins .

[RacerX10]

perfect, thanks for that info blacksheep i'll check it out later this week.

[99jcar]

spacing beetween flywheel and starter

if you have the Bert transmission and bell housing, there should be .060 thousandths gap beetween the flywheel and starter max. just keep shimming the flywheel until it connects just right but dont shim it to much or the starter wont release.

[sj valley dave]

I don't think so :

This looks like a Brinn flywheel/coupler...All of our Berts are 2 piece..We run a Brinn tranny and a Bert bellhousing..