okay to start off I needed to replace my front cover gasket because I was leaking a nice amount of oil out of it, my mechanic told me it would atleast be $400 to change out, but I had just finished spending $640 getting the omp lines replaced, and a few other things. SO I was flat out of cash and I decided it wasn't that big of a job, so I got the front cover gasket and used gasket sealer to seal all the other gaskets that I didn't have, anyhow I did it in about 2 days and I thought I did a pretty good job.

However I was talking to another rotary mechanic and he says I may have damaged the needle bearing when I reinstalled the front pully, I used an impact wrench set on the lowest setting, basically he said the thrust washer came off the needle bearing when I took off the front pully with the impact, therefore not sitting right on the e-shaft. He said I could tell if I checked the endplay of the e-shaft, he also mentioned too much or too little endplay will cause rotor slap, is this true?

what should I do?
this guy really scared the crap outa me!

 

I would say for starters measure the endplay of the e-shaft? good luck man!

 

http://www.mazdatrix.com/faq/pulley.htm


could have been avoided with a piece of wood... should have asked before you started

 

I did!!!!!!!

https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...ht=Front+Cover

how do you check the end play?

 

hmm, and the first reply says to look at the mazda trix site, which is what I listed above.

 

Damn, I search all over that site and could not find the link you put up, althought I was looking for front cover, not the front pully, I think I'm going to shoot my self now

 

I had to do this in my FD when my front oil seal went out. Talk about being scared while doing this...Good luck with yours though

 

And the first response was.. what?



Sorry man, gotta undo all that work and replace that bearing.

PaulC

 

The hardest part of checking it is getting the bolt out. And make sure you torque that bolt when you finally put it back in. Torque it real good and put some sealant on the copper washer to boot, just like the manual says. I've attached a jpg out of the manual. Its self explanatory, I think. Just remove the bolt, clean any debis of the parts and measure with ??????? A set of dial calipers? A depth gauge?? Whichever you can come by.

Its not a certain thing that the by pulling the pulley that disaster follows. Prior to not knowing about the possibility of disaster, I've pulled the front cover off one of my engines in the car and reinstalled it without dire consequenses.

Here: http://www.mazdatrix.com/faq/pulley.htm is the MAZDATRIX faq. It does not show how to measure, but gives a clue about the bearings.

EDIT, EDIT: Thank god I get to edit. The above does not show how to check the e-shaft end play, which I think was the question. The above shows you how to tell if the bearing has dropped down or not. In my mind that is what you need to do, not check the end play. The spacer hasn't changed its size so the play will be whatever it was when built. You want to know if the needle bearing has dropped down taking up the end play, and that can be checked by doing the above in the jpg. (wormed out of that one, did I?).

The JPG:

 

The endplay could be checked with a dial indicator touching the front pulley and you shoving and pulling on the pulley or the flywheel thru the inspection port..But if you had a dial indicator, you wouldn't be asking that question. I'd check the protrusion with the dial calipers or depth gauge.

YOu didn't say if you'd been running the engine. Probably have. Just something one thinks and wonders about.

 

thanks for the help everyone, and yes I have been driving the engine, I haven't seen or heard any ill effects, but I'm going to check the pully depth, like says in the hayes manual and what helpful hailers said, but wait I read this thing in the hayes manual that if I don't remove the front stack I shouldn't have a problem with the bearings, I'll get the pg # in a sec

 

Check the play on it before pulling all that stuff out. I'd hate for you to pull all of it away only to find out that it was good

 

Good observation about the *stack*. You've got the timing gear sitting there on a keyed shaft and a chain on it. I think you're going to find *alls well* when you get through.

 

well I hope so I'm going to check the endplay and go from there, Thanks Agian everyone

 

pg # 70, 24 b, has caution in bold and says, "To prevent the needle bearing from being wedged by the spacer, do not move the eccentric shaft and balance weight before tightening the eccentric shaft lock bolt."

I didn't even place my finger on that thing, but I'm going to check anyway cause rotor slap sounds very scary

 

You mean I have to deal with this crap when I swap my S4 cover onto my S5?

 

yeppers