Hi all, I'm new to this forum and have a question that I've posted on VMF but also wanted to see if anyone here might be able to help more specifically related to the HiPo rotating assembly.
My engine is a 302 Mexican block but has what appears to be 289 hipo components for the rest of the engine (heads, rods/crank, damper, possibly flywheel, possibly cam). The car is new to me and I can't completely verify the specific history of the engine with the car (actually an A-code fastback GT) as I purchased the car from the family of the deceased previous owner. I don't know for certain if this engine was run successfully for a period of time or if he was just in the process of swapping it and making changes. I've run the engine in the car to do some checks and to flush the coolant but have not had it on the road yet.
That being said, I pulled the front cover and dropped the pan to change the rear main seal and to check the oil pump and timing set and noticed that it does not have the hatchet counterweight and has a double roller timing chain in place of the original narrower timing set.
My plan was to put it back together with a new timing cover and water pump, install a new damper (either Summit or Ford Racing 28.2oz damper) and a new 28.2oz Centerforce flywheel to go along with new Centerforce dual friction clutch kit. Was talking to my brother (Boss 302 owner/builder) and we were getting a little concerned about possibly disrupting the balance of the assembly by swapping out those parts and the uncertainty regarding if the engine was put together with the hatchet counterweight and then removed at some point for the double roller timing chain. Or, if the parts or assembly may have been balanced before reassembly accounting for the removal of the hatchet counterweight.
I've learned that the hipo flywheels and damper/counterweights are actually 30.4 oz.in imbalance rather than 28.2 oz.in. Would that mean that even if there wasn't a question about the hatchet counterweight, would it be a bad idea to change out the damper and flywheel combination to 28.2 oz.in? Has anyone run into this dilemma?
And then how would the counterweight factor in if both the damper and flywheel were equal not including the counterweight?
I've been trying to go through the 289 High Performance Mustang book by Tony Gregory and Bob Mannel's Small Block book/bible for information but still need help.
The rods do have the 3/8" bolts along with orange paint, the crank has some remnants of orange paint and has material removed at front and rear counterweights (one 3/4" hole at each). The flywheel has more of a yellow paint daub than orange but appears to have a test mark on the inner bolt circle on the clutch side (or maybe it is a locating mark?) and has a small divot (about 1/2" diameter) removed from the rough casting on the engine side of flywheel. The damper has 3 small 0.300" holes grouped together on the front side of the ring. I'm not sure if any or all of these would have been like this from the factory or if they may have been done later.
I was ready to button everything back up with the new parts but then hit this snag. Thanks in advance!