I'm trying to torque the crank pulley bolt down. The motor is in the car. I searched and found that some people were putting the tranny into 5th gear and pressing firmly on the brakes to <U>remove</U> the bolt. Will this also work to torque it down? Does this cause any future damage of any way to the 5th gear? I know I should just buy the tool, but I'm just curious if this 5th gear method works just as good. Thanks

 

Bump

 

I normally leave off the flywheel cover when I'm putting motors in for this very reason. Then you can stick a screw driver between the teeth of the flywheel and the tranny's bell housing. Just make sure to do it at the thickest part. I've done this probably 100 times (had a bad timing belt tensioner that I was fighting) on various cars. I cracked one D series bell housing but it was -20 degrees outside, and the car didn't warm up before I started wrenching....
Aside from that, I have never had any problems with the flywheel teeth or anything else....

 

Yeah the screwdriver in the flywheel works too. I just wanted to find out a little more about the 5th gear method. Its seems like the easiest/least expensive/fastest method so far.

 

I would put it in 4th gear, as the synchro sleeve is much larger for 4th gear than it is for 5th. Basically 4th gear is stronger than 5th gear.

That's the way I do it on my d15b