# Snow Commander down :sad:



## bosco659 (Feb 1, 2013)

Bought a Snow Commander a few weeks ago that had a bad surging or hunting problem. After messing with the carb I found that it also needed a piston. Ended up doing a rebuild of the engine since I had it apart.

Started it up this weekend and it was running like a champ. Left it running for a few minutes the heard a bang and the engine stopped. Long story short the flywheel grenaded = now I'm not very happy. 

Now I know that the Rtek engines are very susceptible to flywheel damage from improper tightening or torquing of the flywheel nut. When I put the engine back together after rebuilding it I was very, very careful about making sure the flywheel was properly positioned on the crank and that the nut was torqued exactly to 425 in lbs. Why did it break then? Got me. The only thing I figure is that there may have been a hairline crack in the flywheel bore. I saw a bit of a gray line that I thought may have been a crack but figured that if had been running without issue before it should be ok yo put back together. My mistake. 

Reason for this post is twofold. First is to warn those rebuilding these Rtek or Duraforce engines that they need to be 100% sure that there is no damage to the crank, flywheel or key way before assembly. Second is to be sure to use a good torque wrench on the nut.

Now I need to look for a flywheel and crank. Anyone out there have one for sale? I can buy a new flywheel easily but the crank is back ordered for 4 weeks right now.

Thanks and please pm me with what you have.


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## Kiss4aFrog (Nov 3, 2013)

Sorry to hear about your Commander.


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## bosco659 (Feb 1, 2013)

Just got my new crank from Briggs today. Can't believe it took a month to get it! Lucky we haven't had any snow to speak of. Engine is back together but the machine won't be fully assembled until the weekend. Keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong with the engine now. 

Just interested, how many out there have rebuilt their Rtek engines and had flywheel / crankshaft damage issues?


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