Here is the balance card. Done back in the old days. Maybe you can interpret it. I don’t know what it means. He said to save it, so there it is.


upload a photo

Don, this is turning into quite the ordeal!
So, the guy needs to spin the crank to get a good idea of how to balance the flywheel?? If the motor has been running smooth all these years then the crank, rods, and pistons should be good. I wouldn’t let them do any machining on the crank, it’ll screw up everything else. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to match the flywheel to the flex plate for balance, but I’m not a machinist.
 
Since this started with the tranny swap, have you checked to see if something is rubbing? There might be space now, but not once its running. Cross member on transmission case, exhaust on something? Do you see that dual image at idle? If not, when does it start? Speed? RPM?  
 
Yes, you can take the crank out the bottom, but what a job!! I did it on a sideways mounted 4 cylinder. It was a royal pain and a lot lighter than your crankshaft. That was 25+ years ago too.
 
If you do a cam swap and get more lobe lift, you will need to degree the cam and check piston to valve clearance.
 
This seems like a lot of work for over the fender and underneath the car, you sure you can’t find a little bit more space in the garage somewhere?
 
Start with the cam swap, just in case the pistons need to be flycut to gain any needed clearance.
 

What pilot bearing did you use when you removed the flex plate.  I did a search in this thread and don't see any reference.  When they attempted to match your flywheel to the pressure plate did they then also balance the flywheel assembly with the pressure plate?  I had my 50 oz-in flywheel rebalanced to 28 oz-in for the 347 stroker assembly.  The Ram pressure plate has some pretty major holes drilled into it.. To allow for future changes, the flywheel balanced to 28 and the pressure plate was then balanced with the flywheel as an assembly.  The pressure plate is match-marked to the flywheel.  Depending on how the shop did the work if you didn't line up the match marks you could have symptoms you are describing.  Last, you haven't mentioned how smooth or rough the engine is when sitting with the clutch disengaged.  Is it rough all the time or just when you are cruising?  Does the vibration steadily increase as the engine speed increases or are there ranges as you go up in engine speed where the vibration decreases?  Unbalance forces increase at a rate of the square of RPM.  So it has to get worse as RPM goes up.  If there are only certain engine speeds where you have problems then it is most likely not unbalance.

I have had several flywheels matched to the old ones over the years and never had any problem.  If it is a competent shop, which it sounds like it is, then I would look elsewhere before pulling the crank.  With the work that you intend/want to do, I would pull the motor if you have to go that route.

Up Date:

I'm not sure where I left off from this thread and thought I'd give an up date. Balancing the flywheel by it self did not fix the vibration so he wanted the crankshaft. I took it out of the bottom with the engine still in the car. When I got it out 4 out of the 8 connecting rod bearings were down to the copper of the bearings. Talking to the assembler he said the crank was possibly out of round or the connecting rods were out of round. To check them means I have to pull the heads, so I pulled the whole engine and took the engine in pieces to Dennis. He cleaned and rehoned the block and I asked him about a roller cam. He supplied a Comp Cam "kit" to make it like Ford. The cam p/n is a 35-421-8. A long time ago some one asked what my compression ration was so I was able to measure everything and came up with 9.7 roughly. I'm not sure I measured the head gasket thickness correctly or the piston dish but I think? it's probably close. I lost the timing marks on the dampener when I cleaned it up but didn't think it would be a problem thinking an advanced timing light would find it for me. NOT! But I didn't know. When I fired it up it did immediately and idled fine I ran it till it got to running temp. After checking for leaks I went to drive it. When I gave some throttle to get on the street it back fired so went around the block back to the house. When I got out of the car I could hear the engine knocking. I narrowed down to a connecting rod bolt striking the oil pan.? I drained the oil and removed the pan and found where I think it was hitting the pan. It's a (new) aftermarket replacement so I "fixed" it. The oil was real black and looked like a new can of very fine metallic paint. It puzzled me that the oil pan would make that much metal. Last night I remembered reading  about changing the distributor gear. I removed the dist to find that the cam is worn down some. Question: can I flush the engine with a couple of oil changes? Or should I pull the engine and have it flushed? I'm concerned about the lifters. I pulled one connecting rod bearing and it was wearing down to the next layer past the shinny layer of bearing material. And so the Mustang work still goes.

And here I thought my saga was a tear jerker. 

The fact that the oil turned black and metallicy in such a short time bothers me. Those tiny little flakes of metal are probably to small for the filter to catch so how much damage has been done?. On the other hand the run time on the engine is short. I would be tempted to change the oil frequently in the next few weeks and monitor from there. Bearings seem to loose that first thin coating in just a few revolutions of the crank so I feel they be OK. 

As for the cam, a new one is probably needed since you trashed the gear. 

Good Luck.

Last edited by RV6 (1/11/2020 6:17 PM)

The good news is we've got three months till Bash D day.

I'm confused, the oil that came out was basically the break in oil, correct?  The metal in it was non magnetic?

Aluminum, copper, brass, etc are non-magnetic. While I am not a firm believer in regular oil analysis I might be tempted to send a sample to blackstone or others. Have you cut the filter open?

Sounds like better better news today vs yesterday! (must be a lesson in there somewhere)
Since the pan is down I would wash it out with Brakleen (I love that stuff!)  .......fill it full of cheap Walmart 30 weight and RUN IT!
Tune it up and drive it/break in/seat  the rings.......... change the oil and give it a good 'look see'  and get ready for the Beach trip
Good news is always....................well.............good!!!!
6sal6

Well that's what I'm going with, and the frequent oil changes. WYAIT told me to change out the dist gear and clutch release lever though, so I'll be doing what he says. I thought the lever was supposed to have a hole in it for the clutch push rod till it got jammed in there. 

The big thing on the distributor gear is to make sure its matched to the cam.  I've run roller cams that did not require a specialized gear.  They had an iron distributor gear pressed on, instead of one cut into the cam made from the same steel as the cam. 

The factory used a "melonized" gear with roller cams.

I agree with avoiding bronze gears.  Fine for a race car with a billet solid roller cam, but not designed for a street application.

This is a good reason not to go with a stroker crank kit when you don't know anything about souping up engines. The new crankshaft came not balanced from the manufacture, Speed-O-Motive in Calif. that is now out of business. Their instructions said to use a 302 or 351 flywheel and that it would need to be balanced together as an assembly with the crank. I had a the 351W flexplate when I installed the engine originally converting it to the C4 automatic. One of the reasons I did the C4 was I thought it would be my daily driver in this Dallas traffic. A lot of extra weight was put on the flexplate to bring the crank assembly into balance. He tried to put all the weight on the crank using "heavy weight" the there was not enough room on the crank to do that. Last year I decided to go back to the manual transmission set up that the car came with and came up with the T5. Not even sure that's a wise choice given my engine. I already had the 302 flywheel and didn't think it would be a big deal to change the balance of that one. As it was he did add more than 25 ozs. to it. He did say he didn't know why he couldn't match it to the flexplate by it self but after seeing the bearings it turned out to be a good thing. After getting it back the second time I can see that more metal was added to the flywheel. He didn't change the weight of the harmonic balancer but did add more weight to the front of the crankshaft as well. I never thought the flywheel as being a consumable piece but I guess the clutch and the starter gear can wear it out. So much for a stroker crank.
  The most frustrating thing now is after getting it all back together and driving it last night, it seems as if nothing has been fixed except the vibration. The engine still has a knock in it and the transmission still slips out of gear when your lightly throttled or coasting. To say the least I'm frustrated.

Tran popping out of gear is most likely due to rounded engagement teeth on the speed gear.  It will need a new gear to fix it.

On balance, when you build a stroker they are going to typically be balanced at one of the two SBF balances, or zero.  My 331, despite being based on a 5.0 uses the old 28oz. imbalance. 

The other trick to balancers is where you are reading timing.  Ford has used three different locations over the years and the pointer location must match the marks on the balancer or your timing will be at best pretty far off, and at worse WAY off.  This is why I always take the time to establish true TDC with a piston stop and verify that it reads correctly or change it via timing tape, etc.