Could have dropped the motor and been done with it by now!!
edsnova posted:It's 40 ft-lbs. P-shop or not, borrow an impact wrench and a compressor and it will brip right off. DO not use a vice or vice grips. The urge will be there. Don't.
Speaking of bripping stuff, I used my air gun to torque down the flywheel nut. I then put my multiplier on the flywheel to torque it the rest of the way to 235 ft/lb.
To my surprise it was already there. I love my air tools. 
Could have dropped the motor and been done with it by now!!
oh....wait.......it's already out!
YES! Unless your alternator shaft has wrench flats, the only way to get the fan off is with an impact wrench. Easy if you have one, impossible if you don't.
Mine must have had wrench flats, because my guy had it out and replaced in about one hour for $60, without removing the engine. The only tricky part was that there was a washer or something on the back side that had to be facing a certain direction. I probably would not have realized that if I had done it myself and that's why I have a guy!
While it was out, we also put in a welded fan that I happened to have on the shelf.
Working on cars without a decent air compressor is like playing basketball without decent shoes. It's possible in the abstract, but not very fun in practice.
And make sure you get a compressor with enough volume to actually DO something, not like this:
More like this (or much bigger):
Or this:
Remember - Bigger is Better when it comes to air compressors! Something like my "Super-Blowerator 9000" should do nicely:
Update. Man is this taking a while. Shyt, OK, let's just call it life, is always getting in the way. Anywho, I took the old alt + fan over to Drake's a couple of weeks ago as he said he had successfully parted the two twice times previous. So we grunted and groaned, whacked w/ a hammer, and generally tried all we could think of for an hour or so -- and nada. So took the parts to a shop in Annapolis, and the impact wrench had the pieces lying on the bench in five sec. Another few minutes and $20 cash, and the old fan was applied to the new alt, and I was on my way. [N.B.: even my trusty Haynes VW repair manual mentions that you might have trouble getting that big ol' nut to budge and so you may have to visit a repair shop and use an impact wrench. And so it was. Also, others on the net admit to mangling more than one Woodruf key trying to wrench that nut loose. When you use a static wrench, all that torque gets resisted by shear in that little ol' key. So, if you are reading this w/ idea to learn something, learn that, and have spare keys handy.] Now we have a break in our regularly scheduled programming to allow for some chores and renovations at the beach house, a lawn that is growing inches per day, seems like, and, well, more doses of the aforementioned shyt, and finally we end up at today. Put it all back together and fired it up. If you put on a few rpms (like 1,000 or more) the gen light goes out like it should. alt seems to be working. Now to balance the linkage, and go for a run, but hold on there big fella, too mucking fuch rain and cold, so that last part will have to wait. If the idle gets too low the alt light flickers and also (this is new) the oil light comes on. OK, so now WTF???
PS, and this is going to sound so weird, but I owe a big debt of gratitude to Mr. Brass Thingy himself, Lane Anderson. If we go back far enough in this tale, you will see much angst expressed about tackling this job, mainly due to worries about how to sneak the fan out of the shroud and past the post upon which the alt is strapped. Well Lane told me to stop being such a wuss, that even he had done this a few times, and all you need to do is loosen the shroud so it can lift up an inch or so, and the deed is done. And you know what?? He was right. About the wuss part, and the part about the clearance of the fan. All I had to do was figure out how the shroud was held down, and that turned out to be really simple: two bolts, one at either side. So, to Lane I say once again: thanks for holding my hand -- I needed that. Said another way: If Lane can do this stupid job, well dammit, I can too.
Flats on the alt shaft -- now wouldn't that have been nice??
Um, you're welcome? I think.
Short report leading to a longer one. Short report is: alt seems to be working fine, I think I'm calling that job done. BUT, and there ALWAYS seems to be a but . . . the gap between getting one job done and having another problem to deal with has set a new record for me. This gap has regrettably been all too short in the past -- weeks or even months. But this time the elapsed time has been exactly zero. If you want to find out about the WTF I called out above, look for another thread to be posted in a minute under that title. I'll be looking for some help.