Turns out the balancer did not spin!!

[sscam69]

Before I started to bolt back up my new manifold (see other post) I needed to check if the timing was off on my car. I had checked the timing with a timing light and I could not see the mark on the balancer as the light flashed. So I assumed that the balancer had spun.

Well I had my brother put his thumb on #1 spark hole and told him to let me know when the air was pushing his thumb out. Sure enough he told me "when" and I could see that the rotor on the HEI was coming around and point to #1 as Vig! had suggested. I could also see the mark on the balancer coming around towards the driver side, I was turning the engine from the passenger side.

So I told him to stick a straw in there and tell me when the piston would stop moving as it reached the top. The let me know "when" and the rotor was pointing to #1 and the mark was lined up to the 0 on the tab:confused

Maybe the timing gun was messed up or something?

So we swap out the manifold and do all the other stuff and after it was all said and done I told him to crank the engine and sure enough fired up. I ran inside to get the timing gun, hooked it up and sure enough I could see the mark but it was hiding under the water pump as the light flashed. I turned the distr. and brought it into view.:confused ad :eek :dance

So what went wrong? Well it is really hard to read the tab because the mechanic painted it and its really hard to read the degrees and which degrees are TDC and BDC. As it turns out I though the marks for BDC were TDC so the timing was always way off and I could never see the mark.

So in the end the balancer was fine and I was reading the tab wrong

 

[Tom Bryant]

Glad you got it sorted out. I use a yellow tire crayon to mark the timing line on the tab that I want. Makes it show up real well.

Tom

 

[rpounds]

Hey Frank!!

I've been traveling - New Orleans and Chicago - so I haven't kept up with your posts. Did you get your new cam in? Which one did you decide on? How are the results?

Ron

 

[vigman]

The timing marks

The ones TWDS the water pump are BEFORE TDC and the ones AFTER "0" are ( you guessed it) After top dead center.

Each hash mark is 2 degrees.

So... tell me a story about that fan.... it's VERY odd!


Vig!

 

[sscam69]

I've been traveling - New Orleans and Chicago - so I haven't kept up with your posts. Did you get your new cam in? Which one did you decide on? How are the results?

I updated the post.

So... tell me a story about that fan.... it's VERY odd!

We were having a lot of problems just trying to keep the engine temp down (after the rebuild) and the blue aluminum fan was bought to help out (before the rebuild, yeah it was overheating then), but it didn't (before or after). So we tried a whole slew of different fans and water pump combos. Oh by the way I have and Edelbrock Victor Aluminum pump that I am going to put back in. All in all I think we had 4 different fans 3 of which I was selling and 3 different water pumps.

The mechanic told us he was going to ask one of his racing buddies if he had something that we could use. So sure enough thats the fan that he presented to us. Now we looked at it and noticed that the edge of the blades were a dented a bit. We asked him about it and he told us that the his friends do offroad racing, I live in a desert, and that sometimes rocks would be kicked up and hit the blades. We used the fan and it helped some but didn't get the job done.

The other weakest link was the fan shroud. The previous owners (buncha morons) for some reason melted the sides of the fan shroud and screwed up the waste gate on it and had that same black fan on it but cut the edges off.

So air was bypassing the radiator and there was about a 2" gap between the shroud and the fan. Thats where the new fan shroud came in. I bought it at a corvette specialist here for $325. The thing we noticed about the differences between the blue fan and the black fan was that it had a larger diameter. When we installed it on the old shroud the black fan would hit it. Hence the reason for the cutting of the original fan blades. So we went to the Autozone and bought a replacement fan, but before we did we measured the diameter of the blue fan and got 17". When the assistant brought out the replacement fan it was the exact one as the black one. I asked if he didn't have a 17" fan and he told me no. According to the computer they came with 18" or 19" fans.:confused.

When we used it on the new shroud it fit like a glove and we rolled with that. Sure enough the temp was under control.

Now that i have the dual electric fans I took it off.

You like the story? Its true by the way! Thats just one of my adventures with this car! And the wonderful world of Bubba's doings.

Whats odd about it?

Frank

p.s. there are other details but this post is long already.