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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Freeing an Atco cone clutch

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While it was right to point out the danger of thread damage from hitting the end of the shaft albeit partly protected by the nut I think that the need for such controlled violence could be avoided with the use of a little heat or leaving the assembly to soak in a bucket of diesel for a week. However if speed is of the essence at least use a copper or lead hammer!

 

Forums

andy 7671 Fri, 29/08/2014

I am of the opinion that PlusGas, a dedicated penetrating fluid, is more effective than WD40 etc. Ive cleaned parts with diesel but didnt know it would free up parts.

olcadmin Fri, 29/08/2014

For clarity, it's probably worth mentioning that Wristpin is referring to some new content added to the website last night:

/technical/atco/coneclutchrebuild-home

This needs a bit of editing which I will do over the weekend. The content was contributed by one of our club members and, as he mentioned in the article, the idea was to show how he did this task with basic (ie non-specialist) tools.

 

wristpin Fri, 29/08/2014

Diesel, red or white has a good searching action. WD 40 is great for what it was designed to do - Disperse  Water;  but it's neither a penetrating oil nor a lubricant . Plus Gas is a great penetrating oil, as is Holts Graphited Penetrating  Oil - if you can still find it, but expensive if used to fill a soak tank!  Diesel on the other hand is relatively cheap and easily obtained. I'm about to leave a seized up Marquis rear roller soaking in a 25 litre drum -  possibly for a few weeks with regular turning  !

Several contributors to an American small engine forum favour a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid  but I've not tried it!