i notice in america, you can buy a tool for 10-15 bucks that makes measuring crankshaft endplay easy and accurate with feeler gauges.can ya buy a similar thing here or do you have to shell out big bickies to do it easily and reliably?and if somethings around where to look in melbourne?thanks

Hi Franko,
I've had a look at the one at VW Alley
http://www.vwalley.com/ 
and at CIP1
http://store.cip1.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ACC-...
which I assume are typical.

By the looks of it, you bolt this onto your (in-car) engine, pull the crank pulley towards the back of the car as far as possible, wind the screw in till it touches the pulley, lock it with the lock nut, push the crank to maximum forward and then measure the gap between the screw and the pulley using feeler gauges. I made these instructions up looking at the "tool"; if they turn out to be better than the packaged ones, I want copyright!

You could make such a tool or have one made very easily; the $64 question is does it work? Well, it's not going to be very accurate; it relies on the accuracy of a normal. no-machine-grade bolt's threads and they're not very fine threads either; it has got six ways to flex, and you're trying to measure something that should be 3 to 5 thou (0.003 - 0.005 ", you're only going to get a rather rough answer. This may not matter for an in-car measurement; after all, you probably only want to know whether the engine is OK or a junker. Once you've measured the end play the only decisions are simple binary ones; buy/no buy, recondition/don't recondition etc.

You could do the same job much more accurately using a dial indicator, which is the conventional way. Depending why you're measuring the accuracy difference may or may not count.

The tool at CIP1 looks the better made of the two; at USD 12.95, say AUD 25 landed here, I bet you could get your local machine shop to measure the end float with a dial indicator for less...

hth

thanks modulus, yea, a mate said i can use his "dial indicator" at work, that looks like the go after your accuracy comments.in muirs idiot guide he suggests a 10mm spanner on a threaded rod into a trans bolt hole,jam a srewdriver behind the flywheel and measure with feeler blades against the spanner, which youve set flush with the original place of the flywheel.....or vice versa. wateva!i have a hard enough time feeling confident my valve clearances are exact let alone 3 to 5 thousanths of an inch!ill go to the workshop,cheers

I used a depth mike and a 0 to 1 inch outside mike, been doing it this way for years never any trouble.

That's what I thought - but what do you stick the magnetic base to? Though I suppose you could stick it on the fly wheel and work backwards...