The Green Book has a drawing of a very modestly lightened flywheel. I've seen some flywheels lightened in days gone by with a very gentle radius along the back. I've also seen the ones (from the 50's) with machined slots machined in the periphery leaving only enough metal to bolt on the cover plate. Lately I've seen flywheels machined to a flat disc of maybe 5/8" that use what appears to be an aluminium spacer to mount the clutch cover plate in the right position.
Has anyone weighed the various versions. I like the idea of the final version but wonder how much it really saves.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 381 Threads: 16
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8 Location: Port Elizabeth, Sunny South Africa
Car type: '26 Chummy, '28 Top Hat, '33 Type "65", single seaters
Following the guidelines from the 750 bulletins of the '50's and '60's, we took 2.5 lbs off the flywheel and pressure plate combinations of our single seaters and they now rev to 6000 with ease.
For a road car you need a bit of reciprocating mass to carry you up an incline, when it comes to shaving rotating mass, it's a fine line and on a road car I'll suggest that less is more and you would gain by lightening the flywheel say 1.5 lbs and balancing everything really well. Effective balancing + reducing reciprocating weight will benefit from careful assembly to minimize friction and its associated losses will pay dividends in the end.
Take off too much and the throttle pedal then becomes an on-off switch.... A hair-fine trigger racing motor in a regular driver is not a pleasant traffic experience.
16-08-2018, 04:35 PM (This post was last modified: 16-08-2018, 04:36 PM by Charles P.)
(16-08-2018, 03:25 PM)Terrytuned Wrote: You mean one of these, total weight of complete assembly 15lbs against standard flywheel/clutch assembly of 24lbs.
Nice one Terry
I was thinking of an aluminium ring sandwiched between the cover and the thinned down flywheel but an aluminium clutch cover looks even better.
Three questions:
Your own handiwork or someone else's?
Is there an article anywhere in this subject.
Yours is for an engine with an engine with a rear facing starter. On an early engine I'd have to graft on a starter ring. Anyone done that to an aluminium cover?
Same alloy cover with starter ring fitted covers from Mark Roper Pinchcliffe Engineering www.pinchcliffe.co.uk same Mark Roper listed in VSCC members list.
