5.9 FI Magnum swap in 73 swinger

There are no good options for a flywheel with the notches for the crank sensor. You have to use a 143T flywheel from a Dakota or Ram, which forces you to use a bigger bellhousing and pushed the starter out leaving even less room for exhaust. I've even toyed with sandwiching a Dakota flexplate in between the crank and the flywheel, but it's too tall withought carving something out which probably means the flywheel would interfer with the sensor and make it impossible to run anyways. And the Dakota/Ram bellhousing doesn't accept an A833, if you wanted to stay with one.

Fzmax on here got Modern Driveline to build him a custom flywheel for a Dakota T56 swap because Quicktime doesn't do a 143T bellhousing. I'm pretty sure he got it all to work, but I don't believe it's a cheap option (if they would even make more, that is).

The last option is to take a 143T flywheel and machine it down to fit a 130T ring, but when Fzmax tried that the machine shop told him they couldn't find a good enough flywheel to make it work (don't ask me exactly why, don't remember). I know of one guy that did it, he even said he was going to get more made. That was 2 or more years ago and I still haven't heard from him on a price.

It's been done, but it's work.

Really the best option I can see is to plan to swap an R154 or MA6 into the car and use the Dakota bell and heavy flywheel. You have to cut the snot out of your car (no worse than a T56/TKO swap, but...) which means it isn't as easy as just bolting in EFI.

Or build your own pick-up off the crank pulley. That would solve it.

Specific to my build, I've got the numbers matching shortblock in my '74 Duster 360 4 speed car. It was balance with the flywheel that is in there now, and to swap to a Dakota flywheel would require the motor to come apart, or a different motor to go in. And even if I accept that the motor has to come apart to re-balance it so I can use the big 143T flywheel, I have to then cut the floor to fit a different transmission. Truth is, I really want a 5 speed and have an R154, but I struggle with cutting up a relatively rare car to put it in, and even if I did I don't really want to run a bigger flywheel and have to fight my starter.

One guy relocated the starter pocket on his Dakota/Ram bell so he could run a 130T flywheel on his R154 swap, but then you are back to not having an available flywheel with the notches.

I've spent years fighting this, and all I find are roadblocks. It's not impossible, but it's nothing like the easy with which you can run an auto using the Magnum EFI setup.

DIONR.

you could possibly take the magnum flexplate and lay it over your LA flywheel line it up with the crank bolt pattern.and mark the places for the sensor notches. then grind them and file them out. like "moparfreak69" did. only he did this with a flywheel from a 3.9. then notch your LA bell housing for the sensor. this way you could use your flywheel and your bell housing. and no tunnel work!



quote from "moparfreak69"
I then found a picture of a correct v-8 tone ring and made myself a little chart for where the new gaps belong. There needs to be 8 single slots which correspond with each cylinder reaching TDC. I just took the ring and layed it down on a bench at work that is covered in aluminum. I took a scribe and marked the inside diameter of the ring on the table, then marked the center with an X and scribed the lines to about an inch outside of my inside diameter scribe mark. This gave me 4 positions for the slots, all that was left was 4 more that fell in the middle of those 4. I just took a square and marked off a 45 angle between each line which gave me all 8 spots. Transfered those to the filled tone ring after lining up the single slot to a position (needed to cut out 7 slots each 45 degrees from each other). I made the cuts with a metal band saw at the shop and cleaned everything up with a file. Using the photo as a template I found that 2 flywheel bolt holes are immediately in line with each other as well as 2 of the slots.