Making (sort of) 360 130 tooth flywheel

[RAMM]

In the past I've noticed that some guys were having a hard time finding an affordable 360 external balance flywheel. I thought hey I'll just call Pioneer and order them. I was wrong the only cheap cast iron flywheel that is still made is the large 143 tooth flywheel for the the 360.

So being the cheap skate that I am I figured if I can still get the 130 tooth ring gears then I can probably machine one down. However I'm not into a whole boat load of work so I had my colleague draw me up an AutoCad print of the 143 tooth flywheel so I could get the positions of the balance holes--The rest would be up to me.

Anyways long story short I made a fixture, bolted the flywheel to the fixture and made 20 pounds of chips. No I'm not being funny. I weighed the flywheel before and it weighed exactly 35.75 lbs. When I was done it weighed in at 15.75 lbs!

I forgot to mention that this was a used flywheel to experiment on--I have a new one to machine ASAP for another 360 stick project I'm working on.

I did this awhile ago and it is currently working quite well in a circle track car.

Here are some pics. If I knew how to post video I would put up some pics of me machining it on the CNC mill. J.Rob

 

[67Dart273]

This kind of stuff makes me nervous. I'm old enough that I've witnessed "a few" clutch, flywheel, and automatic explosions. My question is, and this is serious, not sarcasm, "what makes you think" this setup is properly balanced to the engine?

 

[RAMM]

Good question only because I left out ALOT of info.

The balancing was accomplished with the aid of a CMM machine and SolidWorks and then verified by sending the flywheel with the rotating assembly.

The factory balance is supposed to be something like (I don't have the print in front of me) 140 grams at a 5.1" radius. The balance holes that I reintroduced and indexed, calculated and measured out at 138 grams! on the same 5.1" radius. This was verified by the crank balancer--The flywheel was NOT touched--It was perfect.

So to answer your question "What makes me think, this flywheel is balanced correctly?" Well--The answer is above. I am no 5 minute man---I plan think contemplate. This took some pretty serious resources that most shops don't have access to.

This flywheel was dynamically balanced with the entire rotating assembly AND living happily in a Pro-Stock DIRT car right now. J.Rob

 

[RustyRatRod]

That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Abodybomber]

Thsnks Ramm.That is hot rodding at it's best.