May 25, 2005

I heard a rattle when I turned off the engine. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, so when Bill came over on the 23rd to help install the hood, I had him listen for the sound. He suggested we go to his house and use his lift, since it wasn't obvious where the sound was coming from. Once on the lift, we determined it came from the bell housing. We removed the lower bell housing cover and found the crack. As for the cause, I don't know. We did find a few hand tight bolts holding the flexplate to the flywheel, but that could have happened from all the vibration. Or it could be the extra power on an old flexplate? I did replace the torque tube about 2 years ago, but used the original flexplate. I hadn't released the pinch bolt until last week. I did move about 2-3 mm, but probably not enough to cause the crack.

So Bill and I replaced the flexplate on my 928 S4 this weekend. Bill had replaced his rear main seal last year and had documented the ordeal at

http://www.billsworkshop.com/P928S4/seal/seal.htm .

We used that as a starting point, made a few changes to accommodate removing the flexplate collar. Here is a photo of the broken flexplate after we removed the bolts that held it to the collar and flywheel:

Here are the exhaust pipes and shielding that had to be removed:

By unbolting the bell housing, moving the tranny back, removing the flywheel, we were able the get the driveshaft low enough to slip off the flexplate collar:

The project should have taken 6-7 hours, but we bent the shifter bracket while raising the torque tube:

It took us a while to figure it out and how to fix it, but we got it all done this weekend:

Thanks Bill for all your assistants, and Marc and Susan at DEVEK for the parts and advise.

By the way, Bill's lift is great, a real time saver:

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