2.3 Flywheels

Oh you are going to love this!

Ok, the old engine was an 87 with 5 spd. The "new" engine, bought from a friend's junkyard, was rebuilt using an 86 aerostar block and god knows what else. It was a good rebuild job, tolerances are dead on.

Now, here is the problem. The "new" engine came from an automatic, so being the foolish, naive person, I just naturally figured I'd take my flywheel from the 87 (which was recently resurfaced) and put it on the "new" engine. Whoopee, guess what, the friggin bolts don't match up. We've tried 4 different flywheels, but you can't get all 6 bolts to match (5 of 6 is the best so far).

Anyhow, anyone else run into this problem? They don't build special engines for automatics (that I'm sure of). I'm ready to re-install the engine, except for this little glitch.

HELP!!!

Dave.

Duh Level

Well, talk about feeling stupid.

Here's the tale....

I first put the flywheel on the crank, it doesn't line up. So, no problem, I figure I'll use the flexplate to find the proper bolt alignment and then use the flexplate to determine the correct flywheel position. (following so far? makes sense, eh? Why dork around with a heavy flywheel when you can play with a light flexplate.)

So, I lay the flexplate on the flywheel, keep trying all rotations, nothing aligns. Now the only thing that makes me feel better is that people from Ford, 2 parts houses and a mechanic couldn't figure out what was wrong either. After 2 days of going slowly nuts, I call a local tranny shop (figuring they are the pros, they'll know what flywheel fits).

The tranny shop guys listens to me patiently and then says...YOU ARE MATCHING THE FLEXPLATE TO THE FLYWHEEL, BUT THE FLEXPLATE IS UPSIDE DOWN!!! Yes dearly beloved, I had reversed the flexplate to make sure the holes from both were next to each other. DUHHHH.

Yep, 10 minutes later, the original flywheel was happily bolted to the crank and all's right in the world.

Dave