Ring Gear Replacement

Barbecued Ring Gear

To replace a worn ring gear in your British sports car, fire up your backyard barbecue and invite a friend over.

Ingredients:
1 flywheel with old ring gear attached
1 New ring gear
1 Five pound sledge hammer
1 Steel chisel
1 Pair of vise grips
2 Wooden or steel blocks about 2 inches square and 1 inch thick
2 Cold beers (optional)

Before you start, take a close look at the old ring gear still attached to the fly wheel. Notice it is not the exactly the same on both sides. Now look at the new ring gear. Be sure you know which end goes against the fly wheel. You must put the new one on exactly the same as the old one. If you get it on backwards, your starter will chew it to pieces.

Place the fly wheel on a cement floor, ring gear side down. Place the two blocks under the fly wheel so they do not touch the ring gear. Now the ring gear is off the floor. Have your friend hold the chisel using the vise grips. (Saves fingers if you miss.) Next hit the chisel
hard…the ring gear will move just a little away from the fly wheel. Keep moving around the fly wheel and soon the ring gear will fall off.

Now for the fun part. Put the new ring gear into the barbecue on the hot coals
and wait five minutes. Use your vise grips to retrieve it. Now be sure you have the correct side up. Flip over the fly wheel and drop on the barbecued ring gear and presto…it should fall on the fly wheel. If not, pop it back into the barbecue for more heat.

The last step is most important open the beers and enjoy the fact you have just saved yourself $40.00 by doing the job yourself. This process was shown to me by Glen Hudson, a real old car master who is some eighty years young and drives a Model A daily in and around Thousand Oaks California. We replaced the worn ring gear on my 1955 BN1 Healey.

This will work better if you drill two holes side by side then use a chisel. When installing ring gear put the flywheel in the freezer (iron contracts) and the heated ring gear will fall on! Also an oven will heat a ring gear just as well at 450°.