Most experienced technicians are skilled tool fabricators, and while most of the tools we make usually work pretty well, they usually only work well on the engines they are made for.
Take flywheel-locking tools, for instance. We all know how difficult or frustrating it can be to prevent an engine from rotating when we remove and/or torque flywheel retaining bolts or clutch assemblies. While dealership technicians usually have access to special, purpose-made tools to lock flywheels securely, we independents often have to make do with jamming pry bars into ring gear teeth or having an assistant block the crankshaft with a power handle and socket on the harmonic balancer bolt.
If these methods don’t work, we can always try jamming some old crankshaft bearing caps into the ring gear teeth, and then blocking the bearing caps with a bolt screwed into the engine block. While this method has been known to work, we do not always have old bearing caps ready at hand, and when we do, it often happens that there are no conveniently placed holes in the engine block to screw a bolt into to block the bearing caps.
We are fairly sure that many of you have devised ingenious tools with which to lock the flywheels on most of the cars you see most often, but wouldn’t it be nice if someone invented a simple, uncomplicated tool that works equally well on most cars? Sure, it would, and in fact, such a miracle tool already exists so consider this-
Fully Adjustable Flywheel Locking Tool
Image source: http://www.bgstechnic.com/en/catalog/category/list/id/415818/browseMode/dataset/pId/472688/page/19
Made and distributed by BGS Tecnic, this is the flywheel-locking tool you have been waiting for all of your professional life. Made of special and hardened steel, the tool is fully adjustable in two directions; firstly via the two locknuts on the high-tensile bolt to place the locking tooth directly over the ring gear, and secondly, via the long slot to accommodate a wide range of ring gear diameters.
Many, if not most other generic flywheel locking tools have several teeth, which means that if the pitch of ring gear teeth does not match that of the teeth on the tool, you often do not get a positive lock between the tool and the ring gear. However, the most useful feature of this tool is that it has only one tooth, which means that the pitch of the ring gear teeth does not present a problem, and you, therefore, get a positive lock on the ring gears on almost all Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, and Mazda engines.
Interested in this tool? If so, you can get it from this online tool retailer’s website, but what do you think of this particular flywheel-locking tool? Does it look like something that could save you both time and the skin on your knuckles? Let us know in the comment section below.
- Please note, this is not a paid advertisement and we do not receive any commission from sales of this product.
