Can anyone post pictures of a BHJ balancer?

[CaifanSC]

Been reading alot about these...im curious as to how they look. Fortunatelly i recently replaced my balancer/pully so hopefully i wont be needing a replacement soon...but you never know.

[DarrylO]

Sorry about the quality but they were taken with my old DC200 back in January:

http://oddbit.net/images/bhj1.jpg
http://oddbit.net/images/bhj2.jpg
http://oddbit.net/images/bhj3.jpg

Darryl

[gldiii]

Steve Webb is the guy who got these built for us!

I organized the last group buy before BHJ started selling them directly.

It is a high quality piece. All steel construction. These pictures are of the early style (89-93) damper but they make the late style (94-95) as well.

[CaifanSC]

Very nice! You can immediately see the superior quality against the stock balancer. Now, im assuming that you have to re-use the 'old' balancer pully right? And what about the thin metal pieces that work with the crank sensor...i dont see them in the BHJ balancer....do you have to use the ones from the other balancer as well? Last, i've heard of running UD pullies with this...whats the deal with that?

[gldiii]

To run the BHJ damper you will need a pulley (stock or underdrive) and the crank sensor "trigger" that is like a shutter wheel on the early style and more like an ABS ring on the later models. You will also need the fasteners to attach both parts. Since the stock crank bolt was discontinued by Ford you'll want a new Mustang bolt (Ford part # F58Z-6A340-A) and possibly washer (Ford part # E2DZ-6378-A )

It was once thought that the stock damper and pulley were balanced as a unit. With some new information gathered from a retiring Ford engineer (and thanks to Duffy Floyd) it now appears that both the stock damper and stock pulley are both neutrally balanced. The pins in the stock damper, pins in the 5-speed flywheel and rivets in the automatic flex plate were put there for final dynamic engine balancing. So, a stock pulley will work fine with the BHJ damper. The aftermarket underdrive pulleys also work because they are machined and generally accepted as neutrally balanced.

[cougarsc]

George, great info on the stock pulley. It always confused me about how could Ford manufacture in bulk the pulleys with imbalances. The pulley seemed geometrical sound, except for the bolt holes.

But now this worries me about not being dynamically balanced just by bolting on the BHJ. From your info, pins will need to be added to the BHJ to remain dynamically balanced or have the rotating assembly balanced. Do you think BHJ should have machined the holes?

[gldiii]

I'm not sure collectively as a group we knew the full story on the dampers when BHJ made the first ones. If you are balancing a new engine it would be best to have all the parts balanced as a set.

Putting damper on a stock engine (or changing flywheels or flexplates) could cause an imbalanced situation. But I don't know how bad that would be in terms of problems it could cause.

The BHJ recommended procedures for balancing their damper with other engine components calls for drilling holes in in the hub only, the balance weight can be lightened or Mallory metal can be added to increase the weight.

I does seem reasonable that their dampers could come with these holes so you could put your stock balance pins back in the unit. This is the recommended procedure for instaling a new stock damper.

I will talk with some of the real SC gurus around our boards and see if we should give BHJ a call.

[pastera]

The factory manual for my 89 states the pulley and balancer are a matched set and have to be replaced as such.

Plus the pins on the damper seem too small to effectively balance the rotating assembly. Another thought is the cost involved in balancing an engine at the factory, I can't believe Ford would balance down to the few grams that the pins weight.

The main pulley is a stamped unit and would be inherently prone to be out of balance, using the pins in the balancer would be the easiest (cheapest) way to fix this.

Aaron

[gldiii]

Aaron, the information I gave out is not just something I made up. It represents the collective wisdom and information gathering of many longtime members of the SC community.

I have read what the manual says and that is what many of us believed for a long time. The newest info about the final balance being put on the engine with pins in the damper and weights on the flywheel or flexplate comes from a retiring Ford engineer who actually worked on the SC and the SC that held the Bonneville speed record for it's class up until a few years ago.

A couple of guys have verified the stock damper is neutral without the pins. Most of the pulleys I have seen have weights welded on them. I do agree that they are the most like part to be out of balance. I have not seen results from someone testing a stock pulley for balance.

I gave out info that they were balanced as a unit for many years. But I don't think that the new sets coming from Ford have any balance pins. I could be wrong, since I have not seen one of those in a looong time. I also think there is a line in the shop manual about moving the pins over to the new balancer which would seem to suggest they balance something other than the damper and pulley.

But the jury is not quite all the way back in the courtroom. LOL Probably the only other way to solve it is to have some balance testing done on several stock dampers and pulleys.

We are considering asking BHJ to add holes to their balancers so the pins could be moved to balance whatever they do actually balance.

But like you said (and others have told me in emails) stock engines at 100,000 miles may be more out of balance by carbon and other deposits than those little pins would weigh.

I believe Ford was concerned with vibration in these V6s made without the counterbalance shaft. From the Ford engineer they did the finally dyanamic balancing with weights on the flywheel and damper. I'm sure the internal engine parts may have been balanced before assembly, so it would not take much to finish the job. That dyanmic balance would include the pulley on the motor, so if it was off, the final balancing would account for that as well.

I'll continue to post more information as it comes in!

[pastera]

gldiii
I wasn't trying to say you were wrong or made anything up.
I just don't see Ford going that far to balance this engine. If you look at the weight of the pin and the radius of rotation, it doesn't do much when considering the low RPMs we run at. On an engine running above 7k, I would believe that they went to great lengths to balance it but not for our engine's limit.

I will look for the line about moving the weights - Any such line would prove the pins balance the engine and not the pulley.

Remember, these are the people who made a management choice to kill people with the Pinto. They calculated that a gas tank shield would cost more than the number of lawsuits for wrongful deaths. They would not spend one penny more than they need to make the car last through the warranty.

Aaron