aluminum FE damper?

[427 S/O]

Tell me I can still get one..........

[ERA Chas]

Call Geo. Anderson and order an Innovators West damper.
It's fluid filled, degreed and a beautiful piece of work. It's 3lbs lighter than the steel orig I had.
I got mine over three years.

[Cracker]

Perry - You can still get one.

[427 S/O]

I kinda ask for that Cracker......

3 lbs lighter!, big deal.....I want it much lighter than that and
I ain't interested in pretty.

[ERA Chas]

Then let me know what you find that's better tough guy...

[ENTDOC]

I would think that by its very nature,a dampner has to have some heft to be effective. That being said,my original dampner could not weigh over six or seven pounds,so a three pound savings is alot. You also could consider an aluminum spacer and save some more weight. Take some sandpaper to it to make it ugly. chuck

[427 S/O]

Tough guy!, not according to what's her name, more like hard headed. I'll look around...

[ted]

If by aluminum damper you mean a solid hub, then I'm not an advocate of these as in reality, they are not really a harmonic damper by design. After doing dyno tests on two different Fe's in regards to damper design, the aluminum hub without any dampening capability costs up to 18HP on the typical 500-600 horse engine. Fluid damper designs also did not fare as well as the elastometer design as they ended up costing up to 6HP on average. The base line damper on both engines was the old heavy factory 427 elastomer style damper with the pulley already made on its front. The other interesting fact to come out of the testing was that there is a correlation between damper weight and compression ratio. The higher the static compression ratio, then the more average horsepower that's achieved by using dampers that are correspondingly heavier. Best bang for the buck are the factory dampers but because they are not SFI approved for specific class racing, then I fall back to the Fisher (mechanical friction style) or ATI (dual elastometer). In a pinch, I would opt for using any SFI approved single elastometer design that balances out very close to zero. I'd also consider some of the other mechanical friction designs that are currently on the market as I've run those with satisfactory results.

At this point, I'm not a fluid damper fan and this bears out by the number of crankshaft failures I see where these dampers are being used along with rpm stutter boxes both at the drag strip starting line or as rpm control mid-track. The state of balance of the fluid dampers as received in an out of the box condition also leaves some room for improvement. Although I was initially informed by the engineers that this was a result of the dampers not being warmed up, this has been since disproved.

Just my two cents worth but should be food for thought.

[427 S/O]

Ted, never had, seen or know of anyone who experience the problems you described, it's a sad day when someone sweats
a 15 HP loss in a 427 cobra.............

[ENTDOC]

So Perry,what is it you are trying to gain with an aluminum dampner? Do you expect to gain much more than 15 HP? chuck

[ERA Chas]

Chuck makes an excellent point.
What you do gain is throttle response. If 3lbs didn't impress you, whack 20lbs off the flywheel-response and HP.

[CSX 4027]

No fluid for the reasons mentioned and others I could not begin to explain. I was sworn off them.

[Byots]

nm .