Posted by garrison on October 11, 1997 at 22:28:46:
In Reply to: Balancing Act posted by Bill Wincapaw on October 11, 1997 at 14:02:05:
what you really are going to need to do is this: you need the piston assys (complete w/rods -assembled) and your crankshaft (after it has been reconditioned) your front pulley and your flywheel and bolts, to a proper engine shop witha stoboscopic balacing machine. here they will make all of your new piston-rod assys. weigh the same amount, which by the way, in factory trim, can be out of balance a tremendous amount, and then they put balance weights on your crankshaft assy, these weigh the same as all of your rod-piston assys. weigh now, and then the crank is turned by a power head, and courtesy of a system similar to an old strobe type tire balancer, they will remove or add weight toyour crankshaft as needed. One of the reasons this HAS to be done to these old engine is- when chrysler originally assembled these engines, they grouped the rods in groups that weighed almost exactly the same amount, then the engines were put together with rod-piston assys, that weighed fairly close to the same weight. (pistons dont vary a lot like rods do.) but over time,a lot of these engines have been rebuilt and 1 or more of the rods have been replaced, causing the original matched weights to be disturbed. I have seen 1 rod in a 230 weigh as much as 2oz. different than the average weight of the other 5, needless to say, this engine at 2500 rpm wont live forever.because the counterbalance weight on the crank doesnt match it at all, so it slowly internally beats itself apart. I hope this helps. garrison dollsanddodges@adept.net