The Flat Plane Crankshaft Kit Discussion

[stevie282]

Ok, I promised to be good. Let's see what happens.

I have been following the rotating assembly market place for many years. During that time I have seen countless requests for information on Flat Plane Crankshafts. Some information around these talks is just flat wrong and some conversations invaluable. About 5 years about Stevie's Crazy Garage started researching the engineering, manufacturing, and cost of a flat plane crankshaft kit. The analysis and design are mostly done, and the manufactures laid out. But there are a few areas that SCG needs help to build the best product. These are technical questions like what size rod journal would you like to see in your kit, and what engine type would you like to see a flat plane crank available for. SCG has placed a questionnaire on its website with the questionnaire. If possible I would like to get interested parties to the questionnaire.

These kits are not associated with Ford Motor Company or Shelby American, Inc.

Happy speed shifting.

Stevie

[dforthof]

Putting a flat-plane crank in any domestic V8 is non-trivial, the resonate frequency of the rotating assembly changes and the years of testing that went in to validating the engine when it was first introduced becomes null and void. From first-hand expierance, I can tell you that Engines are usually designed with their resonant frequencies just out of the bound of their RPM range, once you allow the engine to "live" in a range consistent with it's resonant frequencies, you'll expierance issues you never even thought were possible.

That said, Ford is in the process of releasing a flat-plane crank in an engine based off of the Coyote (the new GT350 5.2L engine), but I can guarantee that the entire engine had to be re-validated and I also guarantee that you'll see some significant differances between the parts used on this engine compared to the regular Coyote. Beefing up the rod bearings, changing the exhaust headers to accomodate the new firing order and changing the software to fire the injectors and plugs correctly is amateur-hour crap, the real long-term expensive block-craking, head bursting problems will never get solved without significant engineering effort and testing that a small outfit is probably not capable of.

If Ford/Roush offers a kit to make my Coyote a flat-plane crank engine, I'll honestly be one of the first on the list to buy it, but I wouldn't consider buying a flat-plane kit from pretty much anyone else.

[stevie282]

Thank you for your honesty. Yes, the Voodoo is on my mind. Yes, the work of Smokey Yunick and others is also there. All these things that you mention and more are a concern with the IP going into the process. Even though you are not interested in me as a vendor, I look forward to your feedback.

Stevie