If you'd like to know what I had to do, here goes.
I built my first ground up engine for the boat. My kids are almost grown up and I need something to occupy me.
The engine is a fairly high performance chevy small block (for a boat), just enough so it does not require dry open exhaust and crazy fuel.
It's a Vortec block from 1997, just as the original engine I had was. But I found it already bored .030 over stock; assembled and balanced with pistons, rings, bearings, connecting rods and long stroke crank. I think, great, that much is done. This makes it a 383 stroker.
The crank is correct for the 1 piece rear main seal Chevy block. That is visible. But I wanted to know how it is balanced. Whether to use a weighted harmonic balancer or unweighted neutral harmonic damper at the front of the crank. Same question applied to the rear where the flywheel sits. I needed to know whether to use counter weighted or neutral.
The crankshaft is from Eagle so I looked up how to identify it on Eagle's website. There are part #'s but none that match my code. So I called Eagle and they said to get the engraved markings from the first counterweight. The number I found was CLI with a date and run code.
The help line person told me it's a normal Chevy 350. For my year that would be weighted flywheel and neutral damper. Good, I stole them off my original engine.
But it turns out that was not completely true.
Skip ahead, engine is built and I run it on a stand, runs well no issue and I only revved it a little. Installed it in the boat and it vibrates, aargh.
Back home, can't find the notes on the crankshaft, remove engine, pull oil pan, got the CLI code, called Eagle. Tech says then it's neutral balance front and rear. He asks if I ran it, does it vibrate? Yup. He's apologetic, but he gets my dilemma.
So I start looking for a neutral balance flywheel. They are basically race parts for my later design Chevy small block. Thankfully some folks on another forum chimed in to recommend that I can have the original one machined off to remove the balance weight.
So I lost a week and a half of summer boating, Which would have been 2 Sundays.
That is, IF, when I start it today, it's good. I have it on a stand in my driveway. It's 6:25 AM and I am waiting a while for folks to get up before I make helluva noise.
Wish me luck.
Post a video if you can.
