For the e15et owners that have the dreaded grinding sound when trying to turn the engine over you may like to know I’ve found a cheap solution to have it back to new.
For those of you who don’t know, the grinding sound is due to your ring gear on the flywheel being overly worn, which results in the start motor not throwing in and mating with the ring gear properly. This is a common problem with e15et engines however can be resolved with not to much money being spent.
What I have found is the ring gear on naturally aspirate N12’s such as the normal pulsar or Astra can be used on the e15et’s flywheel. Although the flywheels on these cars from the manual version is different, the actual ring gear itself is exactly the same and usually the gears on the std pulsars are in very good condition.
Although looking at the flywheels you would think that the ring gear is all one piece with the flywheel this is not actually the case! What can be done, is the ring gear can be carefully heated (via oxy) and removed from the flywheel itself and swapped over from the na pulsar to the e15et.
The ring gear going from the e15 flywheel to the e15et flywheel must be done with some urgency to ensure that you get the gear on the flywheel in time before it contracts to much and will not fit.
Once cooled the ring gear does not move and is exactly the same is was before. I did this with my flywheel when I was rebuilding my engine recently. I picked up the astra (n12) flywheel with good condition ring gear for $25 and cost me a further $25 for my mechanic to do the heating and swapping.. All up only $50 to fix a problem that really ticked me off, and would of cost way more to buy an e15et flywheel, if you could find one in better condition anyway !!
Hope this info helps some of you guys with worn ring gears 😉