SB Ford Balancer?

[britracer89]

Anyone know anything about fluid damper/balancer for small block ford? Good, bad, ugly?
Brian

[sdwarf36]

Yes. Good + good idea. One thing to watch-Ford has a dozen different front covers with different timing pointers for each one. Some on different sides-some only 10 degrees off.Had a crew not check to see if the pointer lined up with TDC on an expensive 289 at a race-melted a bunch of pistons running 40* advance!

[britracer89]

Thanks for the timing cover tip. The Triumphs are always off a little. Usually just +/- 1-3 degrees. Although I did have one on a stock motor that I found full 10 deg off. Of course I found it after I spent 50 hours chasing Lucus and rebuilding carbs trying to get it tuned.

So... the fluid balancer is a good thing.

[Mopar 151]

Another thing to watch with SB Fords - there are different counterweights for external balance, depending on the year, for sure on the balancer, I think the flywheel too.
Some aftermarket balancers have changeable counterweights to accomplish this - Well worth it, IMHO.

[sdwarf36]

Talking to my boss whos far more intune with v8 stuff-he's not a big fan of them. Say the the design came from the diesel world -where the "hits" from the crank come hard--but not very often. (low rpm)
He says if you start getting up in rpm , they're not as good as an elastimor (sp?) style. Theres plenty of good balancers out there-wouldn't think of running a stock one.