Readying Natasha for the new Timing Gears

I ordered a new set of #5 Timing Gears from Wagner's Cycle yesterday. I spent most of today cleaning up the engine front cover area mainly. Removing the metallic shavings from the damaged gears, cleaning components, draining the oil and disposing of the oil filter. Lots and lots of metal shavings to be found throughout the process!

Went out and bought a deep cycle battery and cables for the upcoming install of the Total Loss Ignition System. Also picked up a three jaw gear puller from Checker Auto Parts.

The clumps of metal shavings that I washed off the timing gears tower.

The magnetic oil drain plug before I cleaned the metal shavings from it

Clean oil drain plug

This is the oil filter cap which holds the oil filter in the cylinder which is part of the front cover, yeah, more clumps of metal shavings mixed in with the oil.

The oil filter cap after I cleaned it up

Timing Gear Tower aka front end of the engine, all cleaned out

Note the damage at top of timing gear tower, hope it holds!

Now for the removal of the crank shaft gear!

The back of the engine front cover, nice and clean, note damaged areas at top hole where the alternator gear spun amuck before it finally sheared off.

The front of the front engine cover, the tubelike portion in the lower half contains the oil filter, the circular disk holds the ignition control module, the cam gear shaft will use the hole in the center.

After lunch, I undertook the removal of the crank shaft gear. The hardest part? Figuring out to how to assemble the gear puller with the right jaws in place. Once I did that, the rest was just grunt work.

I ended up using a 13/16 Socket, placed against the inner ring surrounding the crank gear bolt hole. That inner ring is part of the crank shaft itself.

Almost in its final position, here's the three jaw gear puller in place gripping the gear, the center screw pushing against the 13/16 socket which in turn pushes against the shaft itself.

You have to use a large screwdriver to block the gear puller jaws from allowing rotation by the crank shaft gear as you rotate the puller's screw inwards.

Voila! The gear is off, and you can see the bearings. Note, I had to use a breaker bar with a 17mm socket to turn the screw on the bearing puller's screw.

Natasha is now ready for the new timing gears.

Note: I'll be dropping the oil pan tomorrow to clean that out as well.

I'd like to thank the work of Bill Glaser and his Unofficial Ural Service Manual Website, and the postings of such Ural Gurus as JohnBG. Here's a couple of JohnBG's many informative postings on russianiron.com and sovietsteeds.com which relate directly to the repairs I am doing on Natasha.

Timing Gear Removal

Timing Gear Installation

I'd like to also mention Chris, of affordablebeemerservices.com, he suggested using a torch and Mapp Gas to heat up the crank shaft gear and at the last second hitting the shaft itself with a quick freezing "Freeze Spray from Wurth. The heated up gear should then slide right off. If the puller had not worked as easily as it did, I would have tried this method. In fact, it's probably the method I will try first the next time, if ever, I have to remove the cam shaft gear (the large one in the middle of the timing gear tower).

His method precludes the need to do all the engine disassembly that I did this past week, and when successful you remove the cam gear without removing the cam shaft. Assuming of course all you wanted to do was take the gear off.

Update 11OCT09: Took off and cleaned out the deep oil sump on Natasha. Glad I did and thanks to all who reminded me as well. There was plenty of metal shavings in the pan:

Yes, plenty of metal shavings, they were stuck onto the pan and took some scrubbing to remove

Ready for new oil

Once I put the oil pan back on, I put in new oil for both the engine (2.25L) and the transmission (1.0L) of Castrol 20W50 Motor Oil The old stuff in the gear box looked pretty clean. The stuff that came out of the final drive, came out black. I put in 135ml of 80/90 Gear Oil. So now I've a baseline of clean fluids for Natasha.