The new crankcase assembly looked fairly good.  Nothing got damaged in shipment.  The seller removed the alternator rotor, drive pulley, and cylinder studs and sent those items in a separate box.  I temporarily installed the parts for this photo.

I threw on a shift lever and ran it through all five gears.  Seemed to be working fine.  No problem finding neutral.  The transmission seemed OK.

I had seen several posts about the case joint leaking, so I decided to test it.  I put on a clutch cover and alternator cover, filled it up with three quarts of cheap SuperTech oil from Walmart, and let it sit overnight.

I checked on it several times.  No leaks.  Dry as a bone.  Then, after about 30 hours, I went to move the crankcase on my bench and noticed a small puddle of oil.  Yep, she’s leakin.  Oil was coming out of a mount-bolt hole.  Should I fix it or see if I can stop the leak by installing an engine mount-bolt?  I dwelled on that for a while.

Then an interesting post showed up on the forum.  BlakeEM had a slight problem with balancer shaft timing.  The pin in the drive gear had backed out and resulted in a catastrophic failure.  Now it seemed prudent that I peek inside.  I didn’t know the history on this engine, so I decided to inspect the balancer drive and fix the leak at the same time.

Ooooooooo!  That’s ugly.  See the pin hangin out there?  Blake didn’t even need to tear the engine apart to get a look-see.

The key for the alternator rotor prevents removal of the starter drive gear.  That little sucker (the key) is tight.  If you start prying on it, you run a good risk of marring the critical taper on the crankshaft.  I found a good way to remove the key is to tap it straight in toward the drive gear using a drift punch.  You don’t have to tap it very hard, just straight toward the gear and it scoots right out of the keyway.  Wrap the key with tape so you don’t lose it.

For the inspection and repair I was planning, the flywheel did not have to come off, but I wanted a 3” flywheel for my monster motor.  To remove the flywheel nut, you need an extra deep 46mm socket.  Those are hard to come by.  I have a special 1-7/8” socket that I fabricated for removing Harley Davidson drive pulley nuts.  It is just a bit too big.  To dial it into the Suzuki flywheel nut I made a .030” sheet metal insert that slips into the socket.  It fits just right.  Also note that the end of the socket has been machined to remove the internal chamfer on the hex.  That’s to improve the amount of overlap on the ultra-thin nut.

Hold the flywheel with a fixture like this.  It’s just a couple of steel bars, two spacers, and two M8 x 1.25mm bolts.  While this tool is in place, it’s a good time to remove the primary drive nut on the right side of the crankshaft.

After the flywheel was off, I threw it in the lathe and turned it down from 6.528” OD to 3.000” OD.  That takes a long time and makes a big mess.  The mod reduces the weight from 6 lbs. 0.2 ozs to 14.8 ozs.  It’s a lot of weight, all rotating mass.