Leaderboard

When I installed my cam, I had the engine on a stand with heads off, and used a dial indicator to find top dead center as accurately as I could. Once I found TDC on the #1 cylinder, I made marks between the rear flange of the crankshaft and the back of the block. Later, when I went to install the harmonic damper, I verified that #1 was at TDC, and that the timing marks were properly aligned with the timing indicator. They aligned perfectly. I'm using a Romac Balancer on a Ford 5.0L Stroker. The factory balancers have a rubber ring between the hub and the outer ring where the timing marks are located. The rubber fails and then the outer ring slips relative to the center hub. After that the timing marks are arbitrarily located and no longer consistent. Long story short: Find and verify TDC, and make sure the balancer marks can't slip.

Thanks for the replies and comments. Time is always an issue, however Im at the age now where my daughter is 26 years old and working full time. Been married 30 years so the wife is obviously understanding of my hobbies. Hopefully continuing to make progress regularily. Hoping more people come back to the forum and participate in the community. Here is a picture of me and my daughter when she was probably 2ish years old, same car Im working on now. I need to get her back in the shop for a new photo - Time flies

It's been awhile, but thought I'd update with something funny I discovered. I've never really trusted the harmonic balancer and where it said 0 deg was. I tested with a piston stop and knew it was off a few degrees, but it wasn't enough for me to worry about. This thing is megasquirt tuned, so I really can just give it whatever timing it wants and be good with that. So I got lucky with someone selling an aftermarket balancer, used. It's the 90055 Pro Products PowerForce damper. I set my old balancer at 0 deg, right on the mark before I pulled it. Here is where the new balancer is showing it should be: The white mark at the top on the balancer is 0 deg. It's probably close to 15 deg off lol. This is before I torqued down the bolt, so I know I didn't move anything when installing. And now that I think of it, I've always had an issue with sync loss events if I went above 28-29 deg at light cruise. I also tried sneaking up on 30 deg at idle just to see what it would do, and it would sync loss every few seconds. But other than that, the car ran great. If anyone else has megasquirt and is having weird sync loss issues, make sure to check your balancer as it may have spun. I've attached pictures of my old balancer too. You can see the rubber is definitely cracked.

Found another RSX seat. It's not an exact match. The stitching pattern is different b/w the seats, and the plastic trim in the headrest area is a different color. Obviously I'm not going to fix the stitching, and I'll just paint those plastic trim pieces black and be done.