happen to me about a year ago found my camera, figure i share to show the potential damage that can happen...
to begin; i just put in my new motor and being lazy i never bought a flywheel access plate, motor went in with no problems...weeks later after a night of going out, i was driving home and went over a huge dip in the road and heard a "tink tink" noise, thought nothing of it and keep driving and notice the temp gauge going crazy high...i flipped out, got to a gas station and poured in radiator fluid and noticed it leaks like a waterfall right at the tranny, towed it home, pulled tranny to find huge hole, sucked up a rock and it pierced right through to the water jacket...had to take it to shop had it welded shut...it was a huge pain...use your scatter shield lol

 

how would a scatter shield help that

 

theres a small gap between the tranny and motor to keep rocks and other crap out...i ended up sucking up a rock....

 

scatter shield? what's that?

 

i think your talking about the flywheel access plate, also called the engine/trans stiffener.

 

there's people who don't use those????

 

thats what i meant...fixing post...yeah i didnt use that i paid the price

 

Damn. I didn't think a reason to use one was necessary... it's kind of a given.

 

**** how do i change the thread title...

 

edit post>go advanced

 

i trusted my friends, who run without them all the time even to this day...i was unlucky

 

Just bought an EJ1, looked under the car and the flywheel cover plate wasn't there, so I got one right away. **** you don't want any sort of general road debris getting in there. ALWAYS use one. Someone mentioned that this is also called the engine/trans stiffener, but its not. Yes the stiffener bolts through the cover, but they are two different parts. Engine/trans stiffener pictured below, numbers 13 or 14.

 

I know a lot of people who don't replace them. Even if something like this doesn't happen, at the very least water will get up in there.

 

LOL that's what I thought. I've never even considered NOT running one. That's kind of an important area.

But then again... there are people here who don't run timing belt covers on DD cars too.

 

i didnt have one either. So i bought one from sombody on here.

 

That is another thing I really don't get, what is the purpose of not running timing covers? All you are really doing is asking for trouble. Yeah the chances of a little pebble bouncing in there are rare, but if one did I'm sure you would be in for a bad day. Plus they have gaskets on there for a reason (timing covers); to prevent debris from getting in there and jacking your **** up.