In a message dated 7/23/05 9:30:48 AM, rrecardo@WEBTV.NET writes:

<< There is one and only one way to get this job done prudently, in a half
hour's time rather than weeks of soaking.

Heat. >>

As much as Georgie Boy hates to agree with Mr. RC, he's right on the nuts
with this one.  I think a lot of you fellows would be surprised to see the number
of BTU's which are applied to your vans once you've dropped them off at the
local Autohaus.

I once was in the spread room beneath the control room of a nuclear power
plant in order to perform a field change on a motor-generator set.  The
motor-generator had a flywheel on it which kept the M/G spinning for a while until the
emergency DC generators were on line and stable, should they ever be called
into service.  The flywheel was perhaps two feet in diameter, about four inches
thick and mounted on a taper to the outboard end of the M/G set.  As with any
taper mount, the millwrights were having a fit trying to pull the flywheel
with the dedicated puller.  They asked me if they could try a little heat and I
said sure because I knew these guys weren't idiots and they had been pulling
flywheels since before I was born.  With that, a green engineer who was
representing the vendor, Combustion Engineering, in this circle jerk stepped in and
said no heat on a critical system component.  He said to stop the work until he
could call his boys in the design office, the same guys who had designed the
useless puller.

As soon as he left, one of the millwrights grabbed the nearest blue flame
wrench and heated the hub of the flywheel.  Budda-bing, budda-boom, in less than
a minute the flywheel was off and the torch hose was coiled.  When the CE
engineer returned, he asked what happened.  I told him that they had snugged the
puller as tightly as they could and the flywheel popped off.  I didn't mention
the novena raised to Saint Kelvin.

Georgie Boy