[Supras] Lightweight flywheel+balancing

[Brandon]

or you could just drop it off at a machine shop ;-)


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <berniek at technicaldevelop.com>
To: <Supras at supras.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Supras] Lightweight flywheel+balancing


> While not as light as an aluminum flywheel, I got a chrome-moly flywheel 
> from AutoCom.  It a lot lighter than the cast iron stocker, and much 
> stronger.  The price was right, too, about half the cost of aluminum.  It 
> still needs to be installed as part of my JDM rebuild, now over a year old 
> due to work considerations.
>
> When the inertia of the pressure plate is considered, the difference in 
> total angular inertia of the flywheel and clutch combination will not be 
> that much different than with use of an aluminum flywheel.
>
> Just a suggestion:  If you have a lathe, make up a ring which fits the 
> center hole of the new flywheel and a small ball bearing in the center. 
> If the ball bearing is sealed, take out the seals and grease, and put 
> clean oil in the bearing to minimize drag.  Put the ring and ball bearing 
> in, put a shaft in the ball bearing, and stick the other end of the shaft 
> in a vise.  The heavy side of the flywheel will roll to the bottom.  With 
> a Dremel tool, you can remove material from the heavy side to the point 
> where you can make the flywheel stop at any point, so its balanced.  Then 
> bolt the pressure plate on, and repeat the process with it.  Punch mark 
> them so they will go together during installation the same way.
>
> There is a way to do balancing in the car as well, which I did when 
> putting an aluminum flywheel in my Chevy powered Firebird.  Run the engine 
> at the speed where the vibration is worst to get an idea of the vibration 
> magnitude.  Then take the access cover off the bell housing, take out one 
> pressure plate bolt, put a couple of washers under it, and reinstall it. 
> Run the engine again, and see if the vibration has gotten worse or better. 
> Try this with each of the pressure plate bolts in sequence until you find 
> the one or two at which the vibration is minimized.  Then change the 
> number of washers to obtain minimum vibration.  That worked like a charm. 
> At one time I believe I saw a GM bulletin describing the same procedure 
> for balancing a Buick flex plate and torque convertor.
>
>            BernieK
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