56 Ford Fairlane hardtop.

Not sure my fat hands would even fit in there [S
Good thought with the guide pin [cl

Thank you Soltz. Yes, after you make a guide pin, you find there are only five different ways you can put the flywheel on wrong. Before the guide pin, however, while working blind, you'll find there are one hundred and forty three ways to put it on wrong.
Anyway, onwards and upwards.

That's your weight lifting exercise for the day [cl

[P[P[P[P[P[P
Torchie

I, naively thought that mounting the flywheel would be a piece of cake, like it usually is, out on the floor, with no bellhousing on.
So, holding that dang flywheel up there with one hand [so it doesn't fall onto the floor], holding the trouble light with one hand, [there was no place to hook it], wiggling the mirror around with one hand to try and see if the flywheel holes were matched up to the crank flange holes, [all of the holes], and trying to start the bolts with one hand brings out a bitter taste in my mouth.
Anyhow, it built character.

To bring you up to speed on my '56 Fairlane, I've been chasing a higher revs vibration, without success. Today, I went out to my old high-school car motor, a '56 Meteor 292 cu-in. V-8, and robbed the vibration damper. It is now cleaned up and primered.
I will pull the existing vibration damper off the Fairlane after I check it with the timing light. Hopefully, it will be turned on its rubber bond and therefore out of balance.

Good Luck [S

The vibration damper is now painted. pic one. That's flat black, honest.
I had taken the clutch and flywheel to town to get balanced and they were good, so now I'm reinstalling everything.
clutch in -- pic two
transmission in -- pic three.

So frustrating!! Hope you get it figured out mac!

Thanks, LB.
This was our Thanksgiving week-end so I've had less shop time but I'm struggling along. The transmission is all bolted in and clamped down, the overdrive wired up and the driveshaft is reinstalled. I did catch a small error in the emergency brake hold down and changed it better.

I did a lot of tidying up little things under the car and zip-tying cords, cables hoses and wires. Then I put my testlight on the vibration damper and whoooo-boy, I found a problem. When I finally found my chalk mark it was about 100* out. In one of the pictures you can just see it disappearing into the shadow. It is really hard to take a picture of chalk mark lit by a testlight because the camera doesn't have a human brain to trick the picture into your sight. Anyhow, those pictures are taken from the other side of the motor from the little pointer.

Are the 312 Ford engines internally or externally balanced?

I think they're internally balanced, mostly.
So off comes the balancer. [pic one]
Everything looked good. So good that I put the old, robbed pulley beside the black car one. [pic two] They were timed the same, from the crankshaft keyway to the white chalk mark they were exactly the same. Whoooo, what's happening here.
I went to town and asked my engine building buddy how this could be and the timing light showed a mistake of 100*. He asked me which spark plug wire I had used to trigger the timing light. I said, "The front plug on the forwardmost head. He said, " the Ford Y-blocks have a weird firing order they call number one the first one on the trailing head. So I took the balancer and pulley off for no reason, that was not the problem. The 100* mistake was mine.

Oops! Sounds like when I was trying to start my 302 after I got it in the car and was using the wrong line on the balancer. You’d think a cut line all the way across the balancer would be the timing mark, well it was, but not for a light, it is for some kind of factory computer hookup. The actual timing marks are faint scratches 1/4 of the distance around from the cut line.

Don’t beat yourself up too badly Mac. We’ve all done something similar!

I put the car back together enough to back it off the hoist and take it outside. Here's a picture of the different vibration damper but I was not able to get the snapshot timed with the timing light flash. Now that I clamped the right sparkplug wire the light reads right. So I revved the motor up to two thousand revs, with the transmission in gear and my foot on the clutch, and the vibration is still there. Just the engine and the 'freshly balanced' pressure plate were turning; no fan and a different vibration damper.

That really sucks, could it possibly be a slightly bent rod? I wonder if a compression test could point a finger.[S[S[P[P

Yes Dozer, it could be a bent rod. I never thought of doing a compression test, though.
Today I unhooked a lot of things so I can take the motor out. A friend came over to get some parts from an old truck and I roped him into helping me take my hood off.

[P[P[P

Time for a 351W swap.[ddd[ddd[ddd

Damn that sucks!