I took my rotating assembly to a new machine shop(freinds recommendation) and asked the guy to balance it. I assumed he had the equipment to balance the assembly if not he would farm it out to someone who did. The thing was he was going to take care of all the small details for me for a real good price (shame on me I know better!) Well, the day to pick up my rotating assembly came and I could go in and get it myself so I send my wife . When she gets the parts home and I see them I noticed the crank is not balanced and the rods have not be touched! yet this guy 's receipt says he balanced the assembly. I setup is a doug herbert 383 kit which contains new rods,pistons, bearings, rings and new crank so the counterweights are with no balancing whatsoever. I called this guy up and ask him about this BS. He tells me that the crank has been balanced and that he did not do much to the crank cuz "it was almost perfect from the factory" .I ask him for a balance sheet and he says he does not keep one. This guy is trying to play me for a fool!! I told him that he better give me my mula back if not we will go and settle this matter legally(lawsuit). He resists any idea of giving money back so I tell him that he will hear from me later on. This guy calls me back and tells me some story about farming out the balancing and one of his empoyees went to pick up the assembly prematurely and he turn over the assembly without looking at it. Yeah right. WEll it turns out this guy is not a fool and he gives me my money back . He cleaned my block, bored it, put in new cam bearings, new freeze plugs all for free cuz of his lying cheating ****. The point of this post is to tell everyone HEADS UP , if they tried playing a fast one on me(and it just happens to be that I am a pain in the **** when in comes to getting things done the right way) then just imagine someone that is just starting to get into engine building? I am no expert but I do check thing over and over and over . And over.

 

It's a bummer that you can't trust anyone anymore.

 

454BBC,

Thanks for sharing. It's a good reminder that we should never take anything for granted. At least he was finally forthright enough to admit his error, but it shouldn't have taken all the pressure from you to get the right answer. It sounds like he may have an internal communication problem with one/some of his employees.

 

Depending on the quality of the parts, new rods and pistons should be all close enough that they don't need any weight change done to them. The balancing work is then all done to the crank. My rods and pistons are lightweight so they had to add a lot of weight to the crank to get it balanced to match the rods and pistons.

If it was properly balanced, they would have also wanted a set of rings to compensate for that weight too.

 

I took my block to the machine shop with pistons. Machine shop called and said it was done,so I picked it up,brought it home and checked it out. They had bored it the required .030 over but no additional clearence[min. 2.8 th] so I called the shop and the guy said "are you sure?" So I took it in and he checked it with a bore gauge and said,"boy it's a good thing you didn't put it together". Point is,never take it for granted that it was done right because anyone can make an honest mistake,not to mention the dishonest people that will just plain screw you!