so today i finished up replacing the flex plate on a 94 3.4L.







now what would cause the flex plate to break like this?



and of course im working 4 feet from this car...



its a 1938 something (cant remember what its called) factory FWD car thats been restored and retrofit using the LS2 drivetrain from a 05 vette... its pretty badass

 

lose bolts will do that over time.

 

FYI. If you take some long bolts with the same thread as the tranny bolts, Remove all the tranny bolts install the two long bolts and let the rear hang down the driveshaft is back as far as it can be, you can just slide the transmission back. You only need about 2-1/2 to 3 inchs. You can reach up with an air ratchet. The only thing you really have to take off is the lines (I have seen guys bend them but not me) After you do it a couple of times you can swap out a flex plate in about 20 minutes. Flat rate sure makes you think outside of the box. Flex plate jobs can be money makers Guys use to grab them as soon as they showed up. If I remember right they paid a little over 1.5 hours, Atleast at the stealership

 

I charged 300 to do the flex plate install a new solid drive shaft (the bearing was shot in the split one) oil change and I replaced the oil pressure switch. It took me about 3 hrs... so 100$/hr sounds pretty good but that's a great idea cam I'll have to remember that for next time.

 

That White beauty look like a Cord

 

That's what it is, I couldn't remember. It really is a very nice car. It does need a little body work and a paint job but everything else is mint.

 

1) Too much thrust with the crankshaft, check if it has too much end play.
2) The torque converter fitting too tightly against it. Make sure there's a 1/16"~3/16" gap between the t.c and flexplate before you bolt the two together.
That Cord looks pretty nice. With the changes in the running gear though, I doubt if it's still a $65k car.

 

I wanna peek under the hood of that thing.

 

Another FYI, Flex plate failure like this is very common. I am not sure why, even under warranty. Having the entire center break out is not super common because the process takes away. Nomally it starts with a single crack. This ends up making a pinging sound most people think is a engine noise. It sounds like a lifter tap but unkike a lifter it is louder from under the car.

The bolt I had made for doing this, I ended up cutting the heads off and sliting a large screw driver slot into them. That way I could remove the tranny if I wanted to or I could use them as guides when installing a engine. For two cheap hardware store bolts I put a lot of mileage on them

 

We used to replace cracked "flywheels" on GM products pretty frequently when I worked in a salvage yard. Of course everything we worked on had a zillions miles on the odometer.

They do make a pretty good racket when the crack gets big and more than one car got poorly diagnised as having bad bearings. We once bought a monstrous 73 Toronado that supposedly had a bad engine and it was the flywheel. Replaced it and sold the car!

Speaking of FWD, that white thing is a so-called Coffin Nosed Cord; looks like a Beverly sedan. E.L. Cord was a real visionary in the auto business and left his mark on quite a few impressive cars, some before and some after that one. The coffin nosed Cord was a startling car with it's FWD, steel disc wheels (which broke), disappearing headlamps, semi-automatic transmission, and more.