a518 Vibration

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69wacuda

Handling, and a 500ci engine.... All in good time!
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Hey guys, I recently got my car back on the road after doing a bunch of stuff to it. It now has a rebuilt 400, A rebuilt A518 with a JW Ultrabell, Brand new driveline and a rebuilt 8.75 amongst other smaller stuff.

I've noticed that the car has a vibration in 1st-3rd (before going into OD and LU). the best way to describe it is as a rotational vibration. It mostly goes away when the car goes into overdrive and the TC locks up while cruising. At risk of poisoning the well of answers (so to speak), I'm wondering if I have the wrong flex plate? Could this be causing my vibration?

Thanks in advance.

Grant
 
it would vibrate all the time not just 1-3 if it were wrong flex plate
 
Could it be RPM related since in lock-up the RPM's drop? Have you tried it in neutral at different RPM's.

We recently had a 360 that was neutral balanced when rebuilt with the external balance damper. So thinking it was an external balanced engine and putting it in a 4 speed car. We used an external balanced flywheel. It vibrated bad. We installed a neutral balance flywheel and the vibration was cured.

Many times when you have an engine rebuilt with new pistons the shop will balance it with the parts that you give them. If they do you now have to use a neutral balance torque converter.

Just a thought you may want to look into since a 400 is externally balanced from the factory. Was it rebuilt at a machine shop at any time since new ?
Usually when this is done you will see a heavy metal plug in the rear crankshaft counter weight.
 
I did purchase the motor assembly from a guy second hand after the machining process. There were weights written on the rotating assembly parts. I had my own machinist assemble the motor. I guess that's the scary thing about buying second hand. Trying a neutral flrxplate isn't to hard for me get accomplished.

Does anyone have a recommendation for one. Just a street motor so I don't need anything crazy.

Also, I imagine there are weights on my TC. Do I need to do something with that instead?



Could it be RPM related since in lock-up the RPM's drop? Have you tried it in neutral at different RPM's.

We recently had a 360 that was neutral balanced when rebuilt with the external balance damper. So thinking it was an external balanced engine and putting it in a 4 speed car. We used an external balanced flywheel. It vibrated bad. We installed a neutral balance flywheel and the vibration was cured.

Many times when you have an engine rebuilt with new pistons the shop will balance it with the parts that you give them. If they do you now have to use a neutral balance torque converter.

Just a thought you may want to look into since a 400 is externally balanced from the factory. Was it rebuilt at a machine shop at any time since new ?
Usually when this is done you will see a heavy metal plug in the rear crankshaft counter weight.
 
Usually when an engine is balanced at the machine shop they balance the damper with it. So removing the damper may not be what you want to do. If you put a 400 torque converter on it I believe that may be the issue.

Because they couldn't have balance the converter with it . The only thing you can do is install a neutral balance converter. Or remove the weight from yours. The problem with removing the weight from your is what if that is not it.

We had the same issue but cured it on a run stand with a neutral balance flywheel. Then we knew it needed a neutral balance converter.

My son noticed that only the rear of the crank had heavy metal when he freshened it. He said at that time something didn't look right because there was no metal at the front. That was due to the external balance damper being used. We tried a neutral balance damper just to be sure and it vibrated.

Now when you look at the motor it looks like and externally balanced motor with that damper. But it is not. A common problem when you take a motor to the machine shop with the factory damper. When ever we do an externally balance motor here it gets a neutral balanced damper. This way the customer can use any performance damper he choses.

There is a 400 warranty block here that states it for a replacement for 71 383 4spd. on the crate. It has a forged crank and is new from chrysler. It belongs to member 1969383valiant we are wondering what that would balance at. We sold it to him in the crate. My son will check its balance status. Its getting a total tear down for new rods and pistons. . Dave is going to put it in his Valiant with aluminum heads big cam and a compression upgrade.
 
a neutral flex plate? That should be what is on your engine The converter usually has the weight. The flex plate I believe you are talking about is when you have a externally balanced engine with a neutral converter . Then you use the flex plate to make up for the missing weight on the converter. You cannot go the other way.
 
Before I would start throwing parts at it, I would first figure out if in fact the problem is in the engine.
I would check and adjust the oil levels,both engine and trans to eliminate windage.
I would get the rear wheels off the ground, and in neutral , buzz the engine up into the vibration zone, noting the degree off vibration;
then one atta time;
> check that the pinion angle is in the ballpark and that the u-joints are smooth. see Note-1
> flip the belts off and retest,
> with the engine in the vibratory zone, I would arbitrarily advance/retard the timing on the fly, and note the difference, if any. See note-2
> take off the driveshaft and plug the hole with a spare yoke, then retest. see note-3
> isolate the engine from the trans by unscrewing the convertor bolts and pushing the TC back into the trans and securing it back there.
I would of course stop when/if the vibration goes away; and after each test, I would undo the changes I just made.


Note-1
As regards pinion angle;
if the rear is too far out, or if the front is not right; then you get a vibration as the U-joint angles fail to cancel.
The vibration gets worse on power application as the springs allow the nose to come up.
Vibration may ease on deceleration, as compression-braking pull the nose down.
hen you hit your chosen cruising speed, you ease off the power and the springs push the nose down. When the trans goes into od and L-up, the engine rpm is forced to decrease which decreases the power, allowing the pinion nose to drop again.
The change in pinion angle with soft springs can be over 10 degrees.
The change at the front is only gonna be 1 or maybe 2 degrees, in sync with the rear.
The front angle MUST remain a minimum of about 1 degree.
The driveshaft HAS to be going more downhill to the rear, than the trans, and at the rear, the pinion has to come down to it. In this way, the idea is that at cruising speed the two angles are ideally equal and opposite. But this situation can almost never be created because compensation has to be ADDED for spring wrap-up under power.
The thing to not have happen, ever, is that as the nose wraps up, it over-centers and causes the rear angle to climb higher than the driveshaft centerline. When this happens, the angles add together, causing large amounts of vibration.
Softsprings and/or a lowered car can make this a real challenge to sort out.
Note-2
The Vacuum advance system must be hooked up and WORKING.
don't bother with the timing light, just pull/push the Vcan, until you find a sweetspot; THEN measure it.
Note-3
The yoke has to be in there to center-up the output shaft. The rear of the trans has to be higher than front so it stays in there, at rpm; check it if you run it up more than once.
Note-4
If the vibration disappears when you remove the driveshaft, then everything back there is suspect.

That's what I would do
Good luck
 
Mine has a slight vibration in 1 thru 3rd also, real smooth on OD.
My first time I ran this set up it was smooth in all gears. Then I blew up OD, rebuilt whole transmission and then I had the slight vibration. I just got use to it, since never time to pull back out and look.

Interested if you find your issue.

Project`67 Dart GT 340 A500
 
Man, if you run it without the driveshaft, the output shaft will run off center and probably vibrate; contaminating the test.
 
Just wanted to put this thread to bed. I took it to a mechanic who specializes in older hot rods and he basically confirmed that it was a balance issue between the motor/TC. I tried to look up the specs for my motor and even talked to the machinist who did all the machine work to the block and rotating assembly. Keep in mind this was about 5+ years ago and this guy is constantly building motors. He remembered the guy who owned my motor before me and somewhat remembered the motor, but couldn't give me the specs I needed. SO.

I took a chance and chiseled off the butterfly weight on the TC and low and behold the vibration entirely went away. The right way would be just to get a new TC, but I really didn't want to pull the trans another time. I will put some miles on her and see how it feels. I will probably purchase a neutral balance TC in the near future. Right now it's just nice to get some cruise time. Thanks again to all who contributed to this thread. It's much appreciated!

Grant
 
Just wanted to put this thread to bed. I took it to a mechanic who specializes in older hot rods and he basically confirmed that it was a balance issue between the motor/TC. I tried to look up the specs for my motor and even talked to the machinist who did all the machine work to the block and rotating assembly. Keep in mind this was about 5+ years ago and this guy is constantly building motors. He remembered the guy who owned my motor before me and somewhat remembered the motor, but couldn't give me the specs I needed. SO.

I took a chance and chiseled off the butterfly weight on the TC and low and behold the vibration entirely went away. The right way would be just to get a new TC, but I really didn't want to pull the trans another time. I will put some miles on her and see how it feels. I will probably purchase a neutral balance TC in the near future. Right now it's just nice to get some cruise time. Thanks again to all who contributed to this thread. It's much appreciated!

Grant
Have knocked weight off convertors many times for extended use with no issues. Let er eat!!!
 
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