Crankshaft nut

[MarkB]

Hi Dave

I had a problem a few months ago removing the pulley nut to get to a leaky core plug behind the front engine plate. I was working alone and with every thing chocked, hand brake on, the car was being dragged forward, climbing over the wooden chocks on the way. After a bit of head scratching, I clamped the fan belt onto the pulley using grips hooking up the other end to the front suspension turning the engine over on the nut to take up the slack and to get the fan belt to bite. I then stood on the fan belt to ad more tension, and then using a meter long bar cracked the nut loose ;) this was used in conjuction with the hand brake and chocks, and the nut had to undo.

Mark  

[junkuser]

You can get a similar effect to an impact wrench using a ring spanner.
With the engine in top gear and hand brake on, put a firm load on the spanner and smartly strike the ring spanner as close as possible to the nut with a steel hammer in the same direction as the loading.
Striking further up the handle will allow the effectiveness of the strike to be reduced by the spring of the handle and also cause discomfort in the hand applying force to the spanner.
As with an impact drive, it is the inertia of the crank shaft that is the relied on to counteract the impact, the loading applied to the spanner by hand is just to take out any play in the system.
May not sound a nice way to treat a tool but a single sharp blow does not do much damage.