what kind of harmonic dampner do you guys have on your lt1 stroker ....i bought the stroker kit and the one they gave me didnt allow for a opti spark if anyone could give me a name i would appreciate it ....the engine shop im dealing with said they have never seen this before....and cant find me the one i need

 

What do you mean "didnt allow for a opti spark"? Are you saying the hub or the damper is too close to the Opti to be mounted correctly? Or do you possibly mean the hub length is not the correct one because it does or doesn't allow for the CKP reluctor gear (hard to tell if ou even have a CKP sensor, since you didn't mention the year of your car)? You can use the stocker, an ATI, Fluidampr, I think Pioneer makes them, some "Fluid Damper" ripoffs avaialble on eBay, elitesparkplugs.com may sell them, etc.

 

Sounds like you bought a pre-balanced kit for a Gen 1 small block. The LT1 uses a different hub/balancer setup than a normal 350/383. FWIW, I bought an ATI damper for my blown stroker.

 

i use C.A.T. power products when building Lt1s

part # PDK9002

 

I use the stock balancer for my 383,for a street car that does not see excessive RPM's,i see no reason not to use the stock piece.

 

its a 95 trans am and the harmonic damper i got does not even have a place for the serpentine belt to wrap around and the shaft is to short when i try to put it on the damper hits the opti before it touches the crank.....thanks for responses i hope this give you guys a better idea

 

I think 97WS6SCharged has the correct answer. Its probably for a Gen 1 SBC. Does the damper have a balance weight on it?

 

Not too offend anyone, but u couldn't pay me to use C.A.T products ever again (or even attempt too). If u wanted to save money see if u can return ur setup and find an internally balanced setup for a one peice rear main. If u don't wanna bother with that then find an aftermarket balancer (but get a decent one, remember u get what u paid for) such as ati, fluidamper, and I think TCI makes one, don't hold me too that.

 

Isn't that stuff made in China. Their insight of the preformance market is "really up there".

 

What was your experience with cat products.... we have been selling cat products for some time now and have no problems .... Believe it of not Cat and Eagle products such as the cranks and rods come out of the same factory. There are so many companies out there that use the same factory the only difference is the name tag so don’t be fooled by other manufactures who charge 10 – 20 times more for the same product.

my .02

 

Isn't that stuff made in China. Their insight of the preformance market is "really up there".

 

I just bought one of the Pioneer units that uses the stock hub. It's been spin balanced to 12,500 rpms. I had two factory ones go bad, and that ain't good, but I shoulda known better than to spin them to 7000. That was on my stock bottom end....my new stroker won't see that kind of rpm, but even so, I don't have to worry about my balancer. FWIW, my balancer from CNC Motorsports was 170ish and is SFI approved. You can get it with a 10% underdrive or without.

 

Where did you buy the kit from?

Lt1 cranks have what they call a internal /external balance system (the front of the crank is internally balanced and uses a zero balanced front damper and the back half of the crank is externally balanced and the flywheel uses weights. but everything else should be the same....

There is a miss conception out there that you can not use late model late model rotating assemblies.
When using a late model internal balanced assembly all you have to do is either remove the weight from the flex plate (auto cars) or rebalance the flywheel to zero for the 6 speed cars. This is a very easy thing to do for most machine shops.
I don’t mean to hi-jack the thread and if you have any more questions send me a pm or start anther thread and I would be happy to chime in

 

havent had any returns or complaints wyth cat. used them on a couple rebuilds, most recent one -we used their crank, rods, roller rockers for a 383 that when into an older nova. -im personally using probe crank,rods, and pistons for my lt1 but got a cat fluid dampner and cat 4 bolt mains. would have used cat but already had the probe stuff. not saying that cat quality is good,great or better. just saying we havent had any problems

 

Well I had a customer buy cat 4 bolt main caps for his lt1, needed so much machine work to make them come close to to the crank main journal that he just threw them away and got eagle caps (no problems there). Then the last time we had a customer buy cat rockers put them on a set of ported lt1 heads with a gm 847 and it kept bending pushrods (so bad that the pr would fall down in the lifter valley and the rocker arm was just hanging loose) put a brand new set of cranes on it, and wallah no more probs. Then another time we used cat h beams in a stroked bbc. After about 6-8 passes we noticed oil pressure dropping off alot. Pulled the engine, and all around the rod ends and the cap was burnt black and smelled horrible, bought a new crank, eagle h beams, and once again no probs and still running the same engine (with a best 1/8 et of 5.91) for over 2 years now.