Back a few years ago you could find shops that would resurface rotors and flywheels relatively easily, but now you don't hear of that very much. I've got a new clutch to put in my setup and really wanted to resurface the flywheel while it was out. Has the industry shied away from resurfacing the flywheels? Or is it just that they are money hungry more now?

 

Well its interesting. Back in the day it was all about re-surfacing everything flywheels, rotors anything that could be resurfaced was. Now a days resurfacing flywheels is still common practice but you don't really hear much about it as who really drives stick theses days and even thoes who do who does the work themselves? Flywheels are expencive enough to make it worth while to resurface them. Things like rotors that again were common place to have resurfaced now they seem to shy away from even though its perfectly fine to do as long as the rotor is still within specs i think primarily because replacement cost vs cost of machining in many cases doesn't really make it economical to resurface. I mean to the consumer it does make scene but to the machine shops is it really worth their time considering how much time other expenses they have to put into it vs how much they can charge for it considering it has to be fairly cheap when compared to just buying a new one to make it an economical option. Beyond that because people dont do their own work whats most economical to a repair shop to take the time to send out your rotors to have them resurfaced or to just order the rotors have them there that afternoon so they can collect your money and send you on your way? Your paying for the parts anyways its not like they really care and its still cheaper in the end for them to just replace it because your paying for their time and a mechanics time is very valuable. If hes gotta take extra time to send your rotors out even if you same money on rotors you paying for the extra time he has to put into it. Even beyond that then theres the time factor people are in a huge hurry today people want theres cars back and shops want your car out to make room for other costumers cars. Buying new rotors the cars on its way that afternoon. No time put into send it out no waiting on it to come back no inspections to make sure the machine shop did his job right to prevent the car from coming back due to defects. Although im not really up on my new cars a lot of things arnt designed with the idea of being maintained or rebuilt (for example front end components that are sealed with no grease fittings there designed to last a fairly long time and be replaced) in favor of cutting costs and weight so its possible some parts are not even possible to be resurfaced due to a lack of extra mettle to play with. So really resurfacing things has fallen out of favor to a degree but not because not good or your left with an inferior quality repair its just economics and conviniance factors at play.

 

check with o rielly's if you have one nearby, my local store claims to do flywheels for $40

i didnt use their service as i was able to find a new flywheel for $60 tho

 

Fortunately I am in the military and I stopped to check our local auto craft shop to see if they could and how much they wanted. They had the machine to do it and they only wanted $25 so I had it done while I was there.

 

Had my flywheel resurfaced. Place called A&G did it for $20. Too bad it was the wrong flywheel and still had to buy a new one.

 

bad thing with surfacing flywheels in hydraulic clutch vehicles is that the clutch is non adjustable and you can end up with same problem as if the disc is worn out and you wont be able to disengage the clutch with the pedal travel

on the old vehicles 83 older you could adjust this difference with the mechanical linkage

not so with hydraulic

so its a risk,,,

most ppl dont realize or know this.

 

true but you have to take quite a bit off the flywheel to begin having trouble i would think

 

Usually the good shops give you a shim if you tell them its for a hydralic clutch.

 

Resurfacing does not change clearance between pressure plate and flywheel.

 

No but it would change the geometry of the clutch pedal assembly and the clutch fork angle. Course even though hydrolic clutches arnt really adjustable persay they do adjust themselves to compensate for clutch wear just like disk brakes do. Granted if it was shaved down far enough it would exceed its range of adjustment but i would think you would have to shave a pretty fair amount off to do that?

 

Resurfacing the flywheel "0.040 will not change the geometery enough to do anything to the life of the clutch or to the transmission. Flywheels do have service limits and if you exceed them then yes maybe you would start affecting the life of other items, but not on a normal resurfacing job. This was the first time this one had been resurfaced so I'm not worried about it at all.

 

No i wouldn't be worried about it either. Honestly ive never heard of that happening but you cant forget the clutch fork is basically a big lever where a little change on one side can make a much larger difference on the other. Again i dont think its a issue with these cars because again the hydrolics do adjust themselves and i think you would have to shave off so much to cause a problem it would be out of spec anyways but i can see how it could cause a problem.

 

As for hydraulic adjustment, there is none. I don't mean the initial adjustment like a cable one, there is no self-adjusting for the clutch system like the brakes unfortunately to compensate for clutch wear. Once the pedal is too high then you just have to get a new clutch set, the only self-adjusting the system has is the spring pressure to clamp the disc. That does not help pedal travel though. The only way to "adjust" the pedal would be to get longer/shorter lengths of the pushrod on the slave cylinder for the clutch fork. Or you could make one that is like the tie-rods and adjust it that way...but that's just too much work.

 

I just got done putting my flywheel on tonight. Earlier when I was talking to a friend about the project...the very one that sold me the engine...I realized that with this 305 flywheel I was going to have to put the 305 starter back in the car. I was really concerned about it because if anyone had followed my last threads about that starter issue I was unable to get the 305 starter to turn the motor over enough to start the engine. I decided to go ahead and put it in with the hopes that having the engine running since would help since last time I had tried with that starter the motor had lost its oil prime. I didn't put anything else on, just the flywheel and reconnected everything else so that I could test the starter's strength. It started so I'm not worried about it now, I'll continue with the rest of this build and run this starter until it dies (probably from the heat of the headers).

 

the last time I had a flywheel resurfaced, pepboys did all the surfaces so there really was no differences in height of the clutch to the flywheel, tho that was also on a FWD cavalier.

mos68x, ebay has awesome tyquano brand starters, only $65 shipped. 3hp, they actually werk really well! I have one on my car, and I have no complaints. This was after the stock HUGE starter decided it didn't like life anymore.