Confused about engine balancing...

[Bandit]

The engine I am building is a MK IV Chevy 454. I realize that these engines are externally balanced. I bought the external balance Fluidamper harmonic balancer and an external balance flywheel to go with my manual TKO 600 tranny.

Am I done? Do I just install the parts, or is there anything else that needs to be done to complete this balancing, such as weights added to, or holes drilled in the flywheel? The flywheel I received looks identical to the neutral balance one I had for my 402 BB.



I just want to make sure this motor gets done up right.

[6'9"Witha69]

You need to have the assembly balanced to the motor. You are correct that there needs to be material added to/removed from each to get it in balance. If it is not too late you can buy an internal balance crank, flywheel, balancer. I much prefer internal balancing. If a part ever goes bad (flywheel or balancer) and you don't have a balance card, the engine comes apart for rebalancing. If it is internally balanced, new part and you are on your way.

[Bandit]

I hear it is much more expensive to get internal balancing done though...is there truth in this?

[6'9"Witha69]

Depends on the amount of heavy metal needed. I needed 2 slugs to internally balance mine at ~$50 a slug. Add $100 labor and it was $200 bucks for internal balancing. Normal external would cost about $100. So it is more, and I do not know how different the costs are in Italy, but to me it is worth it to go internal.

[Lowend]

After accounting for the additional cost of an external balance flywheel/flexplate having the assy internal balanced dosen't cost more than $200 additional generally

[Bandit]

So how do they actually go about externally balancing the assembly? I want to make sure my machine shop did this. They didn't mention it.