My rebuild is almost finished and I've got a test stand to fire it up. I'm wondering if a flexplate alone is a good enough flywheel for test firing?

That's it... Thanks

 

if you just plan on firing it off and nothing else, then it's fine to use a flexplate. I do it all the time at school. We got bench test motors sittin around on stands.

 

Just out of curiosity, what else is there I could do with a motor in a test stand?
I was gonna fire it up and break in the cam and maybe show it off, but that's about it.
I guess it might be fun to hook a propeller onto it and let it pull me around on a skateboard ... !!

 

you can do the break-in period on the bench and it is recommended in case someting happens to it and its not in the car. Also you might wanna chain it down somehow so then it doesn't try to jump off the stand. One of my instructors built a 350 and he sid he had to chain it down cause it would try to come off the stand

oh and yes you can show it off but make sure you don't try to rev it too much. Let it idle and rev it to about 4000RPM then let it drop back down and do it again. Do it a few times so the rings will have a chance to start breaking into the cylinders and the pistons. Good Luck!!

 

Cool, thanks.
BTW If you know where I can get a good deal on a propeller, I could probably find a shopping cart...

 

ROFLMFAO!!!!

Not that I know of but just be careful man. Don't want anything happening to a fellow f-body owner

 

OK... I'll make sure the kill botton is close by

 

bah.

hook up a auto trans to it... place assembly on 2 pieces of tubing... attach two wheels to the front... attach a rear axle directly to the trans output....

point car in safe direction, sit on the trans and start her up. :lala:

lmao, for more weight reduction, skip the front wheels..... and shorten the tubing to just hold the axle to the trans... the engines strong enough to be a stressed member.... just lean back so it wheelies.

 

A flex plate is fine by itself.

I've done this many times, when I was first learning to build motors; but I don't bother any more. I would lash the valves, check for leaks, etc. by doing that. But having learned how to properly adjust valves and get them right every time (just like the factory does.... you don't honestly think they fire up cars on the production line and hot-lash them, do you??), and how to build leak-free motors, I find it no longer worth the trouble.

The main thing to watch out for is the fact that when the rotating assembly attempts to accelerate, it does so by attempting to force the block to rotate in the opposite direction. I would strongly recommend tying the engine down (or up) to something so that it can't topple your stand. After a couple of scary moments once with a motor that wanted to rev suddenly and uncontrollably, I took to doing it with the motor still bolted to the stand, but with the hoist attached to the top of it, so that even if the stand tried to fall over, the engine would remain upright and somewhat constrained.

It's real easy with a carb motor, since you can just dangle a piece of rubber hose in a can of fuel. In fact, one time, my late little brother and I were putting an engine into some large car or truck or something that had lots of room in front of the engine; we even put plugs in the heater hose fittings and attached and filled the radiator, since we figured that we could put the rad in at the same time with the motor. We ran it for at least a half hour on the stand that way.

 

Ive posted this a few times, so those who have seen it..sorry

It just sounds like this is what he is talking about, made it out of an old shopping cart.

 

Thanks, I have a pretty safe "special purpose" stand that's nice n low... pretty sure it won' get away from me.
Nice work on the shopping cart, good power to weight ratio there.