MRC Forum- brought to you by www.morini-riders-club.com Member: g7AW3f

Hi All.

Just a cautionary tale. I have been rebuilding my X3 and one of the first jobs was to get the generator rewired at west country windings. So got it back all nice and freshly rewound. I then installed it after a new belt and then attached the flywheel and tightened but not torqued up the nut. So today went to do the valve gap and put the rockers on. I hand turned the engine over using the flywheel got some strange squealing sound but thought it was the belt bedding in. The engine did seem to loosen up after few turns over but i put that down to better technique by me. I moved on to another job and dropped a washer and heard it ping against the flywheel. I couldn't find it so thought it may have dropped and got stuck on the magnets. No worry i thought and popped the flywheel off to find three chewed nuts on now three bent bolts that had been used to re attach the stator to its back plate. The three bolts are 30mm in length and have been bent and the nuts ground by the flywheel as i hand turned the engine over. Thank god I had dropped the washer!

Oops, and I'm also pleased you found the problem. Were these bolts used in place of rivets? in short, why did they end up there?

Anyway, well done for investigating. I used to be an aircraft engineer and we were trained to strip an aircraft until we found the missing item even if it took many people many months. Morinis are easy to deal with by comparison

Yep. The bolts had been used in place of the rivets. The bracket on the single coil was not even attached to the base plate ( when offered up it has a 2mm gap) . Not sure how to move forward at the moment. Do i rivet it? if so advice needed ( rivet virgin!). or nut a bolt? I will post a pic when i get time.

Cheers

Steve

I had a similar problem some time after I rewound an ignition coil on a Kanguro. I had used nuts and screws in place of rivets and one obviously vibrated loose, causing a belt breakage and foreshortened pushrods. I 'repaired the repair' with screws and nuts again, but ensured that they could not come loose again by using loctite and a blob of paint.
Another recent topic on ign coil rewinding brought it back to mind.