Articles: Lawn Mower Repair

Briggs, Kohler, Honda,Tecumseh all have flywheels no matter what hp.Removing a flywheel is not that difficult. There are various wheel pullers that can be used.First the flywheel cap mustbe removed from whatever typeengine you have.The mostcommon reason for flywheel removal is to check flywheel key tosee if it is sheared.The crank shaft is tapered and so the flywheelwill be pretty much seized to it.After removing the cap you willsee a nut and cup on todays engines, older models will have a starter clutch,that can be removed with a pipe wrench.After you remove the nut which will be a three quarter or eleven sixteenth in size,you can install a gear puller similiar to above to remove flywheel, although you can remove by the shade tree method which is a little riskyThe shade tree method I use is to bind the flywheel with a large scredriver in the fins of the flywheel and remove the nut or starter clutch,if nut is removed instead of clutch, I screw nut back down even with the top of crankshaft, put a prize bar underneath flywheeland strike nut with heavy rubber mallet while applying pressure from pry bar and most of the time the flywheel will pop up.Isaid most of the time, however I HAVE HAD TO USE PULLER MANY TIMES ON STUBBORN FLYWHEELS.THE RISK using the shade tree method above is, that if nut is not exactly flush with top of crank, you could mess up the threads by striking it,thus not getting nut back off or back on,so a sixteen to twenty dollar puller versus a one hundred fifty dollar crank, you figure.One more note; a flywheel with a sheared key is a little harder to pull than one that is not since flywheel is turned on crankshaft when it shears,thus causing magnet to pass coil at the wrong time at compression stroke, thus putting engine out of time,causing it not to run.There is more on flywheel keys in archive section of newsletter.