NOTE: You need to handle heavy vehicle parts under the vehicle when replacing the flexplate. Always use safety precautions and safety jack must stand on level surface to support the car. Otherwise, injury may occur.
Recommended tools:
1. Appropriate hand tools to remove and replace fasteners
2. Brake or wire brush
3. Brake clean
4. Flywheel turning tool
5. Thread locking compound
6. Voltmeter
Remove old flexplate and look for issues
When your old flexplate has been failed, you need to pay attention to the kind of failure and figure out other mechanical or electrical issues associated, which could be corrected to avoid taking place again. There are some particular common problems, including mechanical misalignments, starter system problems, engine tune-up problems, fastener problems and problems regarding interferences.
When replacing the old flexplate, you should also pay attention to fasteners which might have been damaged or loose. In the meanwhile, you need to look for any cracks, metal transfer and abnormal ring gear wear which can indicate other issues. If fasteners are still in good shape, you need to clean any thread locking compound and observe any defects that you didn’t find before. But if you need to install new fasteners, we ZNDmotor highly recommend high quality bolts.
Install new flexplate and check for fit
With a brush or a scraper, you can clean the surface of crankshaft and old thread sealing compound. Subsequently, you should slide the flexplate onto the crank and check that it sits flat up against the crank and that bolt holes line up. You need to ensure that the flexplate slides over the crankshaft pilot diameter. It is permitted to gently and evenly to open up the bore on the flexplate to make it slide. A tight fit can ensure that it would not be easy to remove in future use.
Next, you need to take the flexplate and place it up against the torque converter to make the bolt pattern on the flexplate lines up with converter pattern. Slide some bolts through to make it fit, which aims to avoid bolt up surprise. Please remember to check metal transfer on the torque converter pads which must be completely flat against the flexplate to contact properly. If not, please dress them with a file.
Now, install flexplate onto crankshaft by using thread locker on the crank bolts.
Now, please ensure that the mechanical and electrical systems of starter can work properly.
After starter has been engaged and condition has been ensured, you can install transmission and converter.
Also remember to maintain proper converter and front pump clearance. The converter should be pulled forward from being fully back into the front pump. If the clearance proves to be visually bigger, you can use shims to make it smaller. Shims must be flat and consistent pad-to-pad. To the contrary, if the clearance turns out to be visually smaller, you must machine or shim to guarantee the clearance, since improper clearance can lead to many kinds of serious failures.
After establishing proper clearance, please thread lock and torque the converter bolts. Now, you should start all of the converter bolts first prior to tightening. And then, rotate the assembly a few times to make sure it can rotate properly without any bolt interference.
Everything finished? Actually, NO!!! There still exist some vitally essential things that you should pay attention to. In our next blog, we will talk about these points.