sometimes you do get lucky

[38racing]

Despite my carelessness. I am doing an engine swap and as part of it testing out the briggs stator that I rewound. So I removed the flywheel. I used some penetrating oil on shaft as part of removal. That went fine. At some point I noticed the pooled oil in the crank end. Figuring that would be an issue when bolt went back in I used rag to soak it up and also blew air gun into it. Meanwhile I had the flywheel on and off to test clearance of screws into shroud to hold regulator. At some point I looked at flywheel magnet side and saw that one magnet had picked up a stray lock washer. So lucky to catch that. Then at some point I looked into crank end. No oil to be seen but something caught my eye. The flywheel key. I knew that it wasn't on the crank or flywheel but assumed laying around on floor somewhere and was going just get a new one. Lucky to catch that. Then I mounted regulator to shroud with sheet metal screws. After shroud was on I turned by hand and heard the scraping. Removed shroud and cut end of screw off with dremel. Lucky to catch that although the hand test turn was planned)
Lastly I had to change starter gear. It's the cross pin style with a black plastic piece. In past I found it tricky holding shaft on vice to drive out pin with breaking the plastic. So I mounted starter mount flange in vice to drive out pin but in replacing pin I actually had the mounting flange crack in the vice. Lucky part I think is that right bolt hole is only 1/3 open so bolt still hold it in proper place and I added a washer to increase clamping area of the bolt on the flange.
So last thing of night I had put cord into cylinder and torqued flywheel to 70 ft lbs and would finish in morning after confirming torque was the 100. So I have a dream during the night that I had tried to start the engine with the cord still in the cylinder. Now that was just a dream or maybe nightmare.

[bgsengine]

Lastly I had to change starter gear. It's the cross pin style with a black plastic piece. In past I found it tricky holding shaft on vice to drive out pin with breaking the plastic. So I mounted starter mount flange in vice to drive out pin but in replacing pin I actually had the mounting flange crack in the vice. Lucky part I think is that right bolt hole is only 1/3 open so bolt still hold it in proper place and I added a washer to increase clamping area of the bolt on the flange.
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Next time, get yourself a 2x4 and cut about 5 inches of 2x4 and then cut a notch about 3/4 inch deptn and 1/4" wide (to make a kind of reverse E shape - the 2x4 is just about perfect height when laid flat to support the shaft and retainer while you drive the pin down into the cut notch without damaging other parts of the starter (especially the ones with permanent magnets in housing which very frequently will break if you hammer on the housing (people still use the "old school" hammer on starter trick when starter won't crank engine over.. to their great expense.. )