New Cast "Steel" Stroker Cranks Arrived: Initial Inspection

[RobMcQuarie]

Well, After three years of waiting, the first of the new "cast steel" FE stroker cranks arrived today!

Pulled the first one from the box for an initial inspection-a 4.25" stroker. NOTE: This is a sample of ONE-it may or may not be indicative of the rest of the cranks.
Overall, looks pretty good. Same appearance as the other cast stroker cranks: small block and 460. Polish/finish looks good except for a few minor blems that will clean with a quick polish. Chamfers look good. Stroke is ok, runs from 4.243"-4.246".

The grind is not quite as good as I had hoped. Main journals varied in size from each other somewhat: 2.7482 smallest to 2.7490 largest, with two journals showing .0004 taper, three no more than .0002. The rod journals were better with small to large of: 2.1990-2.1994, and no more than .0001-.0002 taper, but they did show up to .0003 out-of-round.

On average, pretty good. Similar to what we see in the other cast cranks for the small blocks & 460's. You just have to remember that these are not high dollar billets, and they need to be checked closely. If you want more exacting tolerances, you will have to plan on having it ground by a top notch grinder-which we have had to do with numerous small block stroker cranks in order to have them exactly how we want them.

Of course, many are already aware by now that three strokes are available in these new cranks: the std 3.98", 4.125 and 4.250" strokers. We have previously used a 4.125" billet in a cast iron block, and a 4.250" billet in the Shelby aluminum block for customer's Cobra motors. But now we will try one of the 4.250" cranks in a 428 block. Scat doesn't know what clearancing issues might arise, so we'll just have to see.

As there has been almost no interest in the std 3.98" stroke crank, we are just going to stock the 4.125 & 4.250 stroke cranks for now. Should be interesting to see what stroke ends up being the most popular. Now all we need is for the new iron blocks to get into full production.

BTW-For those wanting the strength of the billet stroker cranks, but not the extensive time in production or high price, we will have a high quality, U.S. produced, FE Forged stroker crank available, hopefully by late winter. Tooling is being built now. Costs will be 30% less than the billets, they will be much more readily available, and the forgings are every bit as strong as the billets.

Rob