How to fit a Front Pulley on Your Air-Cooled Porsche Engine

In our last tutorials, we tested and refit the oil thermostat, and fit the case chain guides. If you missed that, check here. In this lesson, we look at one way to install your front pulley. The front pulley connects to the crankshaft and can be called a crank pulley as well.

There is a pin on the back of your front pulley to lock it in the correct place. Sometimes the pulley can be tight to fit and may need a little tap to place it against the case. Never force a part on, something is wrong, gently tap till the pulley is flush.

Lubricate the threads on the through bolt and the crank with a drop of ATF, or engine oil, before you engage.

How to Torque the Front Pulley

To tighten the bolt the crankshaft is going to want to spin. There are a couple of ways to lock up the engine. If you have a flywheel on you can use the small flywheel lock. We do not have a flywheel on this engine so we use a different method

The crankshaft front pulley is the last part on the case.
Front crankshaft pulley

Taking a bronze punch we slide it through the little end of the rod. We choose either number 3 or number 5 so the rod is centrally located. The brass is a soft metal and should also be smooth, not have any knurling that could mark your case.

Turn the motor over slowly till there is pressure to hold the rod in place and stop the engine from turning. The torque for the front pulley bolt is 80 Newton Meters.

Up next in your Air-Cooled Engine Build

Next lesson we set the cylinder head studs. The type of head stud we use is dependent on the engine, and the exhaust side can be a different stud from than the intake side. We have an article on head studs and their history here.

Remember back to the beginning where we reinforced the case with time serts? The head studs in the magnesium case can be a problem. If you missed that, check out, Must do machine work for your Magnesium engine case

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