Is there a way to cut down a Ryobi Flywheel without a lathe? I have a drill press and vises etc. Any ideas?
Happy New Year.

a pair of pliers or a small adjustable wrench is the best/fastest/lightest way, even with a lathe it's a PIA and is VERY noisy to do.

with the plier method, you pretty much can't break the fins off down far enough to hurt the integrity unless you force things too hard, when you grind the remainder smooth don't go too deep, I mainly just smooth them off. Before you get too crazy making things pretty, stick it on a prop balancer, I use the Dubro unit with the narrow part of the taper toward the fixed cone then an aluminum washer on the other side of the flywheel with the other cone on backwards, trim the thing and check the balance, if you get it trimmed and still need to remove material, use a drill and remove a little at a time without going too extreme. They're usually somewhat off balance stock, so don't get too carried away.

I've done probably 8 of them. I found Ranger Fred's method to be the one I liked best.

The Phelon flywheels are much more out of balance than the Walbro ones.

You can not grind the aluminum with a stone. It has to be cut with a carbide cutter which often clogs and has to be cleared with an old scribe.

I found that the smaller air powered die grinders with a 1/4" collet to work best. I use a # A-11 cutter with a 1/4" shank. I bought all this stuff at Farm and Fleet and TSC stores at one time.

The grinder I liked was a Campbel Hausfeld made in China that was like $12.95 and lasted about as long as it took to clog up the flutes on the cutter. The red linen fiber vanes were worn out. And being Chinese, no replacements available. So I cut some large zip tie pieces to about the right length with side cutters for the vanes and cut with the die grinder to my heart's content. I always used the same cutter and it didn't wear out on the diecast metal of the flywheel.

I used a balancer much like the Dubro called a High Point that is sold by B & B or Bennett Built. I mounted the flywheel on the arbor the same as talked about in the previous post.

I bought a larger more expensive die grinder but it wasn't handy for the flywheels

There was a person on here that did his flywheel fins on a drill press. He mounted the fly wheel on the the drill press chuck with the largest bolt that would go through the hole and flat washers and nut tightened down. The bolt was then fastened into the chuck.

Square your table with the spindle and mount a a hard board with some coarse sand paper using spray contact cement. - sand away.

Then you still have to balance it and you can only sand as deep as the beginning of the counter weights.

You have to balance with the die grinder and balancer.