56 Ford Fairlane hardtop.

[MercuryMac]

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.

[Old Iron]

Are the 312 Ford engines internally or externally balanced?

[MercuryMac]

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.

[Bamamav]

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!

[MercuryMac]

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.

[DozerII]

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

[MercuryMac]

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.

[Old Iron]

[Bamamav]

Time for a 351W swap.

[lowbudget50]

Damn that sucks!