DansYellow66

Installing a new aluminum flywheel with my McLeod clutch. I had the clutch balanced with my old flywheel many years ago and they did drill a couple small holes in the pressure plate to balance it.

I knew the machine shop I used previously was closed now so I called up the biggest engine builder in Little Rock to see if they could do it. Nope - no arbor for the flywheel. Bring us the crank too and we can probably balance all of it together. No thanks - not ready to tear down the engine yet.

Called up the local speed shop who used to do race engine builds. No, we stopped doing engine builds and don't have an arbor to mount a flywheel on our old balancer anymore. So I asked if they knew someone who does? They gave me the name of a marine shop who builds lots of high performance engines for cars and boats and has a machine shop and many of the employees from the closed machine shop now work there.

I call them and ask - can you balance this? No, we don't have the arbor to mount the flywheel - it's a minor piece of equipment but has a big price tag. But he ventures that a new flywheel should be fine to mount the clutch on - if it's off just a little I will probably only feel it when I let the clutch out. I asked if they could tell me of anyone still doing clutch balancing and he said no, the equipment from the old machine shop was sold to an individual who now uses it only for himself and they don't know of anyone else who might be able to do it if the "major engine builder" at the top of the thread can't do it.

Crud - I know of another engine builder about 120 miles from here who balanced my flywheel/clutch when they built the engine for my Cobra - but that's a long ways to go. So would you just slap it all together and hope for the best or go ahead and buy a new pressure plate to mount on the flywheel? I can't believe the state of well equipped machine shops around here has gotten so dismal.

MikeM

Can you use a bubble balancer for a tire/wheel?

DansYellow66

A bubble balancer - now this is beginning to sound like a snipe hunt.

MikeM

When you balance a clutch flywheel, you are only balancing for static imbalance. That is what a bubble balancer does. Static balance.

If your previous shop balanced the clutch flywheel together, it's possible/likely(?) they drilled the flywheel to balance them. This means you likely have an out of balance flywheel.

DansYellow66

That does concern me. The guy I talked to at the Marine motors shop used to work at the machine shop that balanced the assembly years ago. He said he didn't think they would have touched the flywheel - just the bolted together flywheel/clutch assembly and dilled the clutch to get close to zero.

But who knows if the old Hays flywheel was well balanced? I see drilled holes in the outer edge but it was so warped when I purchased it that I had to have it surfaced twice to get it flat. That's why I wanted to balance the clutch back to the new flywheel to be safe.

I hate to keep throwing money at this transmission overhaul but I'm sort of leaning towards a new pressure plate.

MikeM

I wouldn't trust OEM balance on either the clutch or the flywheel. Your nickel. And I would balance them separately.

GOSFAST

Hi Dan, by all means get it balanced or you will never know if you have an issue whether or not it is the flywheel/clutch!

It's hard to believe there are no "arbors" where these guys have the balancing equipment. I would think they would at least have one of their assemblies to balance and could mount your parts on it, this is easy to do??

A few years ago we did a build for a member up here, shipped it to him, he had his guy do the clutch install in his town and wound up with a very bad vibration. First call by his guy was the build we did, so we had him send us the new Hays flywheel AND pressure plate, his installer never checked it for balance. Wouldn't have mattered much, the NEW flywheel was deemed "defective" by Hays. They got involved in this dilemma when we notified them there were NO counter-bores present for the pressure-plate bolt shoulders in the new wheel. They shipped us a new replacement wheel, no charge, no frgt!

Thanks, Gary in N.Y.

P.S. Assuming this is an "independent" balanced unit you bolt the pressure-plate to the flywheel with the CORRECT bolts, index it, and do all the correction on the wheel, not the plate. You cannot do it this way on a "dependent" balanced unit however. Here's a shot of an "indexed" ***'y.

rnixon

As a young man I worked in a high performance custom machine shop, building and balancing pressure plates. I built and balanced thousands of units ,everything from antique vehicles to NHRA and Nascar.

When we balanced a pressure plate to go into our shelf stock we used the same neutral balance flywheel on an arbor. If we were balancing a motor, the crank, with its bob weights, was done first then the harmonic and flywheel were added and when done it was essentially a neutral balance assembly, and any of our off the shelf pressure plates could be used .

When balancing a pressure plate ,the corrections are made to the plate, not the flywheel, your clutch is still balanced .

wmf62

in my experience, balancing the flywheel and pressure plate as an assembly is a crap shoot if you ever have to replace one of the components....

Bill

427Hotrod

I've never balanced a clutch to an assy. If it was marked for balance as an assy. "like my Soft Lok from McLeod or the previous dual disc one...I kept them all together. But otherwise I've never messed with it and never noticed any issues. I don't like marrying parts together that wear or limit swapping.

Like angle milling heads and then cutting an intake to fit. The right way is to mill the intake face of the heads so any intake will fit.

JIM

DansYellow66

Thanks Gary - my Hays flywheel and pressure plate were indexed and marked when they were balanced years ago. There are some obvious drill holes on the plate from balancing. They are not painted over - however, any McLeod factory balancing would have been done after painting the hat I'm sure. There is also a quarter size, unpainted washer riveted to the hat on the pressure plate that I'm thinking was probably the factory balance work - but for all I know the manufacturer may have done the drillings and the shop the washer weight. I guess either way I still have the same uncertainty.

DansYellow66

The old machine shop that is now out of business was supposed to be very good - the place to go for good machine work - so I'm thinking they followed the same process - just hard to know now.

Yeah - especially after 20 years and a faded memory.

I'm going to do a little more searching for a shop who can still do this nearby - I can check with a couple more guys. If nothing turns up I'll get a new clutch and install with the new flywheel.

Thanks

65tripleblack

Why do you have to do this? New wheel should be balanced and new clutch should be balanced as well. No need to balance as an assembly. If it were me I'd get a new clutch and install the new wheel and be done with it.

DansYellow66

The reason for doing this is my clutch is old but has less than 3000 miles on it and I would like to re-use it if I could get the balance checked with the new flywheel.

I have a Centerforce clutch with about 500 miles on it sitting up in the attic already and hate to give it another low mileage stablemate collecting dust up there (along with my old Hays flywheel now).

If I can't find someone to balance it - buying a new one and bolting the whole thing together is my Plan B.

GOSFAST

This is just not really good advice, re-read the blue color print in my post above, the "NEW" flywheel was N.G., period, Hays took it back, absolutely no questions asked. This was AFTER it was installed AND run in the Vette.

We run 2 engine balancers here, A "Stewart-Warner" and a newer "CWT", and we have not seen a single "NEW" flywheel OR pressure-plate that was up to our standards to just be installed?? Not one!

Thanks, Gary in N.Y.

P.S. Let me give you small tip about balancing, there will ALWAYS be a certain amount of "imbalance" remaining in a balanced piece. If you are balancing 2 separate pieces (flywheel & plate) independent of each other and have that very slight imbalance remaining in BOTH pieces the risk is higher than balancing the BOTH pieces as a separate unit. You can "tighten" the remaining imbalance doing it as a single entity, indexed! You need to be real careful when balancing at a 7.000" radius (1/2 the flywheel diameter) the "small" imbalance becomes multiplied by the larger diameter! Again, this way will NOT work on "dependently-balanced" units.

domenic tallarita

This

DansYellow66

Thanks Gary - ultimately I would like to see it balanced as an indexed assembly like I had before. I guess I'll keep looking and see if Craft Performance Engines down the road about 120 miles can still do this. They did the unit in my Cobra replica.

domenic tallarita

Sorry about the pic only, but it only took 1 hour.
First I balance the flywheel, then bolt the pressure plate (no disc) and do a final balance with the plate in place.
Did all 4 discs on my 67 and the harmonic balancer this way also.

Dom

Robert61

You would think most any engine shop would have an internally balanced chevy balance job in work. They could throw your flywheel and pp on it and get it done for you. Assuming this is for your 427.

DUB

COOL TOOL..and I am a tool *****. I now see I have to get another tool and begin having fun with it.

I get my clutches and flywheels for SPEC and they are already balanced.

DUB