My drive pulley is tapping my ignition pickups when I press the clutch down, maybe a shagged washer on the crankshaft, do I have to remove the whole engine to get the shaft out?

 

There is a spacer at the front of the engine that can be replaced by removing the front cover. The spacer sets the end play. But if you have a lot of play, it is likely that the thrust bearings, etc. are hosed at the front, rather than the spacer magically becoming the wrong size inside the engine. Pull the front cover and see what is going on in there. Have you had the front pulley off the engine ever? The thrust washer/bearing can fall out of alignment when the pulley is removed.

-Max

 

no I have never had it off, It has happened before and I took it into a local Rotary workshop and they simply machined my drive pulley and it was fine, that was about 6 months ago and now its happening again,
When you say "front cover" do you mean the drive pulley?
I have also noticed there is a squeaky noise coming from the flywheel end of my engine now as well when I let off the clutch, this noise seems to go away after 10-15 mins of driving ( could this be a result of the bearing falling out of alignment after they removed my drive pulley for machining?? it only started sqeaking after the rotary workshop worked on my drive pulley. Or maybe it means that the shaft itself is just shagged causeing all the problems at both ends of the shaft.

 

/\ wow! sounds like the thrust bearing is going bad like max said. shaving the pully just bought some time till the end play increased enough to hit the pick ups again. not much of a fix. i guess the spacer could have been wrong from the start but after all this time i bet the bearings are bad

 

this is not good, it will damage many things inside the engine, it cannot necessarily be fixed by just pulling the front cover

that is certainly an option, but i fear damage has already been incurred

 

I also think that you really need to watch out here... too much end play and you can get spun bearings INSIDE the engine which totally destroy everything. Personally I would not run the engine until this is fixed.

 

thanks guys, it aint what i wanted to hear, but its what I needed to hear.