Inliners International Forums General Discussion Hi Performance Fluidamper, now what?

Hi all;

It looks like my 292 is almost finished. I'm going to be using a fluidamper (for that smoooooth six) but what do I do about the pully? Where do I look for a bolt on? What size? What to do about turning the h2o pump and alternator which are now out of alignment?

If it helps, I'm only turning a fan/h2o pump and alt.; no a/c or accessories.

Thanks

BHJ offers an application specific dampner for these 6 cylinder engines. Just because a V8 one will fit doesn't mean its a good choice.

I have not heard good things about using a fluid damper on these 6's.
Tlowe even shook one loose while dyno testing.

MBHD

Correct Hank, a V8 dampner is designed to address harmonics in a completely different set of RPM ranges that are much different than what the 6 cylinder requires. And as proven, sooner or later, bad things can happen when using the incorrect parts.

Yep, not only 6 cylinders has had problems w/the fluid damper. V-8's I have heard had problems w/them also.

MBHD

I appreciate the concern but my question was regarding the alignment of the crank pulley with the alternator and h2o pump. Any help on this issue would be appreciated.

Need to make all new brackets, modify or make a new water pump pulley.

MBHD

Modify damper or crank timing gear can help to tuck the damper in closer to the timing cover.

I'm using a Streetdampr on my stroker. Have not broken anything yet, nor had any issue with flywheel bolts coming loose. My experience only. I can't say it's the best choice.

Even with that mod, does the belts & pulleys all line up?
If not.

How far off is it after doing the crank gear mod?

MBHD

I started with an ATI 20 years ago but had to change the hub every time I took the engine apart, also had to weld the nose of the crank and have it machined to the proper press.

Changed to a Fluidamper five years ago and have not had any problems since. It works fine for my setup.

Ditto with the Fluidamper on my 300 Ford - its been on there since forever without nary a burnish mark on the hub, FWIW.

Operating the engine at an RPM range that is far away from the dangerous harmonics zones goes a long way towards your success with various dampners. As a comparison, we never got more than (20) 1/4 racing passes before we broke the crank into 2 pieces because we did operate the engine in those harmonic ranges. Needless to say, we had crankshafts being prepped constantly to replace the ones that would break in competition. We also broke camshafts periodically because of the transferring of harmonics from the crank to the valvetrain, and they had to be magnaflux inspected at every tear down, which was every 20 passes unless something else broke besides the crank.

A number of years ago now, one of the members, and I forget exactly which inliner it was, had been running and racing the old Chrysler spitfire six and was having a heck of a time keeping timing chains on the motor. He changed over to a fluidamper and that solved the problem. There was another damper that was sometimes used, the fisher unit, but i recall the rumors that it was problematic. In fact, i can recall that if you had a motor blow up in the lanes, and the car next to you had a fisher damper on the motor, the blame for the puked motor always was laid on the motor next door, lol.

We also broke timing gear sets occasionally too. Harmonics can create problems that sometimes aren't even associated to it, and often lead to wrong conclusions as to why a part may have failed. We also discovered that with our dirt track engine program that when the stroke of the SBC gets above 4.000" that they also take a timing chain out real quick, and a gear drive is needed for those engines, or they wouldn't live.