ring gear, clutch and flywheel

My ring gear had suffered some wear due to a faulty starter solenoid, which was providing a short throw to my starter's bendix. This resulted in poor starter engagement, and a ton of terrible grinding noise. All of the teeth on my ring gear (gear which the starter grabs to turn the motor over) where chewed down 1/8" by the starter.



One of the first fixes I did back in 2007 was to replace the solenoid with a new and correct one from MG cycle. Instant fix too, perfect engagement every time. Although the damage to my ring gear had already been done, the engagement has not suffered since, and I'll just reuse the ring gear when the motor gets put back together.

The ring gear and clutch came off next.



What's funny about this picture is that I thought I had the clutch pack completely out of the mill. Still secured in the flywheel was the pressure plate and springs, which one would think would want to pop itself free due to the spring force pushing it out. However, the amount of friction material in the splines of the flywheel bound the plate in place and prohibited complete movement. It actually took me to clean the friction material out of the splines with a flat head and some judicial prying to free the plate. And now I no longer wonder why my clutch wouldn't properly disengage all the time.

Some may measure out their plates and decide to reuse them or not. Personally I'm just going to replace them as I'm a firm believer of "while you are in there."

Here is the pressure plate removed. Only the flywheel remains.




And with the flywheel removed.



This is supposed to be a dry cavity and any oil you see is either from the rear main seal or the cam shaft plug seal. I'll replace the main seal and seal the cam plug with JB weld.