Circlips with plain ends - how to get them on

[marcus]

Struggling to get a circlip on which doesn't have eyelets at the ends for circlip pliers, any ideas?

[Nate]

internal or external?

[marcus]

I'm guessing it's external because it goes over the distributor shaft.

[ianaudia4]

You could drill a small hole either side or cut a small grove either side and use some small screwdrivers to manipulate it in.

[go-for-it1]

Circlips are hardened and tempered steel so no chance of drilling holes I'm afraid. If you haven't got any reverse pliers or flat ended circlip pliers try just putting the circlip over the top of the shaft and tapping down with a socket and then a parallel punch till it fits in its groove.

[james butler]

Push it onto the end of the dizzy shaft and slide down into position. I struggled with the same thing, I did wonder if you could just use a bog standed circlip instead?

[marcus]

Managed it in the end, put one end in the groove and held in-situ with a small-ish flat-bladed screwdriver and used another to push (down) the rest of it into the groove, working from the end being held with the first screwdriver towards the free end.

[marcus]

But yes, did wonder why that one is plain and the other two have eyelets, don't think it's a previous bodge because the parts diagram shows it like that.

[james butler]

I think I know why. When the dizzy is built the entire shaft with all the gubbins on it can be removed just by taking the helical gear off the bottem. So maybe that circlip was put on knowing full well if it needed to be removed then you would be replacing all the internals anyway.
But is really cheap and nasty to use cack circlips

[PeteGLi]

Bit late, but you need something like the bottom one of the two on this link:
http://www.knipex.com/index.php?id=1216 ... oupID=1454
There are cheaper makes out there.

[marcus]

Ta for that.