racerstech

That was my thought too. Now that is a unique piece. I know a guy that built a big block 180 and he said that it blew up in like 5 min of running because it vibrated so bad. A flat tappet cam will be pretty expensive so roller cam will probably be the only option. Call Terry Kirk at Custom cams 662-534-4881. He has ground 180 cams before.

Here is a 4.250 180 crank http://www.racingjunk.com/category/1277/Cranks/post/1693388/Crower-180-degree-SBC-4-1-4-stroke-crankshaft.html

Just curious how you are going to balance the crank. The 180 cranks that we used we use to balance them just like a 90 crank using bob weights but we added around 4% over balance. Does anyone know of a more precise balance method? The 180's we did had a 3.500 stroke and we really never noticed any out of balance or vibration. Do you know where there might be anymore of these cranks laying around. I am getting ready to have one built for a project but if there was one laying around that would be easier.

Braap you said "(Single plane V-8 cranks are not balanced with bob weights. They are balanced just as a typical 4 cylinder crank, neutral. If a 180 degree V-8 crank is balanced using bob wights, that engine WILL vibrate)." I have talked with serveral people on this and some say you have to use bob weights and some say you don't. I am inclined to believe you have to use a bobweight. When we balanced these cranks we did use a bobweight and we never seen a problem from vibration. They were used in all out race cars with solid motor mounts. They seen RPM up to 8500. On the dyno the torque curve was extremely flat and made more power then a 90 deg crank. Although we never did a lot of R&D with different cams and headers. The one that I am getting ready to build now will be mostly for R&D. Just can't get over the flat crank bug. We got these cranks from Crower in the early 90's. They said they orginally built 10. They had 3 left and they wanted to just get rid of them. We bought the three from them. I have asked them about making some more and they said they were not interested. I talked with a guy that built a BB Chevy with a flat crank. He said that it shook his fillings out of his teeth and then it blew up. I do know where one of these cranks still is. The guy that has it will sell it but he wants to sell the whole engine for $6000. Bowtie block, oliver rods and I think it has some old Brodix Aluminum heads on it.

I just found this forum and thought I would show you these two cranks that Crower built back in the 80's. Billet SBC 3.500 Stroke. We had three of these cranks at one time. I guess I never took a picture of the third crank. All three had different counter weight configurations. We built engines with all three. They all had some degree of vibration to them but we could not tell that one had more then the other. I am getting ready to build another flat crank SBC and was looking around online to see if I could find somebody that knew exactly how the counterweights needed to be made. The cranks below have two different counterweights. One has full counterweights with a BB Chevy snout and the other one has center counter weights with a std SB Chevy snout.