I bought a 2001 honda prelude and was told it needed a starter and a clutch. I bought a new starter to put on it before I hauled it home. Got it to start up but it had a bad knocking noise coming from the clutch area got it home pulled the starter out and I started to look at the flywheel when I touched it it moved so I started to inspect it more and I could spin the flywheel and clutch freely so I don't know if it came loose broke the bolts or the flywheel itself is broken has anyone else had a issue like this or possibly know what could have happened I'm going to start pulling it apart this weekend hope it's nothing to major

 

Sounds like a broken crank.

 

Thanks for the reply!! I figured it out all the bolts backed out of flywheel. Flywheel is junk and possibly the crank

 

I've never had a problem with any flywheel bolts coming out as long as I torque to spec and I've never had to use blue loctite which is what they recommend in the Helms to prevent vibrations from making the flywheel bolts come loose. I would suggest everyone reading this thread to put blue loctite on the middle third of the threads of the flywheel bolts when installing the flywheel. I've seen 3 new threads in the last two weeks of people with this problem. Those bolts need to be on at spec, which I believe is around 80 ft/lbs.

 

Yeah I don't understand why they came loose besides the car was taken to a shoddy mechanic. There is random bolts missing it only had one starter bolt and one of the flywheel bolts were longer than the others. But for all the bolts to back out like this I'm going to assume they were not tight.

 

Yup ,that's what mine did. Broke right at the last crank journal.

 

If you had one longer bolt ,then you only had one correct bolt. The shorter bolts are for a automatic transmission flexplate. The rest were barely catching threads.

 

Yea I didn't think about that! That could of been the problem I ordered new bolts it looks to have enough threads in the crank to be able to work except the one bolt hole it's pretty messed up in have a pic of the bolts

 

Yup, those are auto flywheel bolts.

 

Yea I bought new bolts and they are definitely the right ones. This whole perdictiment is caused by a mechanic that didn't know what he was doing at least now the car will be put back together correctly and will be taken care of