Difficulty is an understatement - it seems to have taken up most of my afternoon
Flywheels can be stubborn but I haven't come across one before where it seemed like it was welded on!
I used a combination of flywheel puller, heat, rattle gun and a generous helping of Irish screwdriver and it eventually submitted to my exertions
Firstly I used my usual method of Yamaha flywheel puller (far left in photo) and rattle gun. The flywheel usually pops off its taper no problem but this time the gun slowed right down and eventually stripped the threads on the puller
The middle puller just wasn't man enough and started to pull out.
Like the three bears story, the last puller was just right!
After carefully checking how far in it had to go before touching the end of the crankshaft, I wound it in with the rattle gun as far as I dared so that it was putting on pressure. I then turned up the wick on the propane torch and once the flywheel boss was as hot as I dared get it, I gave the puller a few bangs on the end and, thank goodness, the flywheel freed off.
What a flippin' nightmare! I have no idea what else I could have tried if the third puller had also failed. I can't see that you can get any sort of puller on the flywheel
Anyone else had a similar problem and, if so, what was the solution please?
I used the rear wheel spindle. Clean it up really well and put lots of lube on. Do it up as tight as you can with moles or similar then hit it fairly hard with a large clonking device, tighten, clonk, tighten, clonk - flywheel is free! Flywheel had been on probably since 2004, certainly for 6-7 years I've had it.