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Old 03-02-2013, 04:29 PM   #8
Alan Roehrich
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Location: Murfreesboro TN
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Default Re: sbc harmonic balancer

Quote:
Originally Posted by james schaechter View Post
Back in the 80's we put an aluminum balancer, I guess it was really not a balancer, just a hub that Moroso sold on our 427. It looked nice, it was very light, it was cheap too!
When we put it on the car, it even seemed like it revved up real quick! After it was on the car a few runs, we got tired of picking up all the crap that shook off of the car! It unscrewed almost every meaningful bolt on the car! Even the transmission case cracked!

It made someone a real neat looking ashtray.

Your story made me think of that one we had. Save a little, Spend A Lot! LOL.

We took the stock balancers off of our 454 based bracket/.90 Super class engines back when NHRA mandated an SFI balancer for 10 second and faster cars. We bought some of those aluminum balance hubs. A few passes later, all those cranks that had a lot of passes with stock balancers were broken, and the timing sets were worn out. We had a rough season that year. The only engine that didn't break was our "high end" (for the time) "big" engine, that had a forged crank and "dimple" rods, and it broke a lot of valvesprings, killed two timing sets, and beat up a set of bearings. That winter, Jim Beattie, owner of ATI, came to the shop (he's a good friend, and has family here), looked at the cars and engines, and asked me how many cranks we broke that season. After he laughed at my answer he told me we were getting some presents for Christmas. A few days later, 4 new ATI Super Dampers arrived at the shop. Never broke another crank, and timing sets started lasting several seasons. We were, and I still am, an ATI dealer, and Jim has always treated me really well.
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Last edited by Alan Roehrich; 03-02-2013 at 04:32 PM.
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