TONING UP AN LS On LS Crankshaft’s we are balancing, I always use a tone ring alignment tool to check that the alignment is correct. Then we place two equally spaced welds to ensure the ring stays aligned. High RPM LS engines have been known to spin the tone ring....
BLASTING OBSERVATIONS Here’s a couple of tips regarding soda blasting. Soda is very fine and it can become very cloudy and difficult to observe your work. I have drilled fresh air intake holes around the periphery of the viewing window, which helps keep the area...
LIMITING OVERSPRAY ON THE SMALL STUFF You can buy a premade spray booth or you can set up a makeshift paint booth using a cardboard box on its side. For extensive spraying you can cut a hole in the box and connect an exhaust fan to remove overspray. If using a larger...
BALANCE HOLE PLUGS Balancing a crankshaft by drilling large holes in counterweights can leave an appearance of the counterweight that is not pretty. To improve the appearance, we keep a supply of disc style freeze plugs in the diameters of our balancing drills so we...
SNUG HAS A NUMBER When using the stretch method on rod bolts that ARP and many other manufacturers use, they want you to snug the bolt before applying load to the fastener. I found a way that myself and any of my employees can duplicate “snug.” I first measure all the...
RING SQUARING When gapping piston rings, an easy and often used way to square them in the bore is to invert a flattop piston and use it to push the rings down to the desired depth. Another good way on large bore engines is to use a tapered ring compressor of the...