Balancing the Engine...Questions

crank, rod's, piston's = the rotating assembly. I don't remember what this part ran me, but it wasn't to bad compared to the money I dumped in the head -which I did nearly all the work on myself.

A good shop will know what to do. Since you are doing that, also replace your crank and rod bearings - nothing to it. I had a sticky wristpin so I replaced those as well. You can get floating wristpin's but they will be more expensive - I think they cut a channel in the stock piston's on either side to accept the clips but not sure on that. If you are using a stock computer and not planning on 7 - 8k rpm's you don't need'em.

I would tell them, if the combo is WAY off for some reason, to not take much off the piston's, they use a large drill basically and remove a bit of metal from the bottom's of the piston's to match them. Since we're turbo'd I don't like the idea of removing metal from my piston's. The rod caps are where the rod's are balanced.

I had all those items shot peened as well (this is supposed to help stress to the parts be spread better, rather than a load finding a weak spot - don't recall all the plus's for it otherwise.) With everything shotpeened, it looked like I was assembling brand new parts in my block, pretty cool.

Use a good shop, the one I used (Race Engine Design) had about a dozen work bay's and 8 or so were filled w/ gorgeous race engines so I knew they knew what they were doing.

It will amaze you how smooth the engine will be if you proceed.

-140

3 or 4 days.

140cilx said:

3 or 4 days.

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3 or 4 days sounds about right.

I AGREE!

SU

My advise for Xanax is to just ignore him. The Mustang gods have their eye on him

Ok, I want to go the 140cilx route. For my 2.3 turbo rebuild I want to balance the engine so it's smoother and hopefully lasts longer. The only thing that needs to be balanced is the crank, correct? How much does it cost to send the crank to a shop and get it balanced?

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140clix is right. Cost wise you need to shop around... My price list is a bit old at this point. :o

As far as the pistons go, might want to consider replacing them with a matched set of performance pistons and forged rods. Also might want to consider going witht he long rod-short piston combo... You still need to do the prep work on the pistons though as 140 pointed out.

Also, don't forget to have your block done up right.

The engine and crank are already balanced but if you want to go to 8000 rpm spend some money on rods, and remove rev limiter
that's all you need