4 pounds on the damper and you’ll have what?? 35 pound of converter or 48-50 pounds of clutch hanging off the other end?
I can tell you I used to spend big money to get my stuff as light as possible and I wasn’t worth it. I was getting wrist pin issues and all kinds of junk.
As far as damper weight is concerned, that 12 pound damper will act like about half that weight or something close to that. That’s because the inertia weight inside the damper “floats” in the silicone gel. It’s not mechanically hooked to anything. So the crank only “sees” the weight of the housing and the hub. Which is about half the total weight, maybe a bit less than half the total weight.
Also, Chrysler has written on this topic quite a bit. Damper weight is critical to controlling harmonics. When they developed the 426 damper they made it bigger and heavier for a reason.
BTW, if you look at how FD develops a certain part number for an application, (you can find this information on the web if you want to read it for yourself) one of he first parameters is how much weight the inertia ring needs to be for all the specifics of the application. And they have to make it fit in the real estate they have. Thats’s why the older FD’s are thicker...they needed the weight.
Damper science is fascinating stuff. So don’t worry about the weight. Just take good notes and check the damper every oil change. You do that buy using a temp gun and measuring the temp of the damper to a bracket or similar very close to the damper. The damper needs to be hotter than that bracket or it’s not functioning. I write down what bracket I’m using to monitor temp on and then I wrote down in my note book why the temp is on the damper so it it is having an issue I can catch it (haven’t had one fail yet but you never know).
