Reply to "Pantera # 5357 - Rocky's 1973 L model"

Hey Larry -

My buddy Wade (Mark IV/4280) has a mill with a rotary table on it.

He basically uses the orientation of the bolt pattern on the flywheel to find the TDC point for the 1/6 cylinder pair on the flywheel.

I am sure he has this reference orientation preset from working on many Ford motors.

Update: He is less tricky than I thought. He just set the motor to TDC via the front balancer, and then marked out the window on the flywheel using the bellhousing. Once the limits of the window were defined, he just marked the degree marks so they would be inside the window.

Once he sets his cylinder 1/6 TDC reference - everything else is based on this. It then becomes basically an engraving job.

His rotary table is adjustable, and in my case, he just just marked off the 1 deg increments for the 1/6 cylinder pair. The 3/5, 7/4 and 2/8 didn't get the same level of detail, but just the key points.

Update: The other cylinder pairs are marked at 0*, 14* & 16* and 34* & 36*.

The intent is to allow a convenient reference for "quick checks" using any cylinder wire.

The reference is set on the bellhousing by initially setting the timing at the front harmonic balancer & timing pointer (e.g. Cylinder 1 - 16 Deg. static advance at idle). The flywheel has a corresponding 16* reference mark milled into it.

Once the static timing is dialed in (and verified) on the harmonic balancer in front, we just went to the little window in the back of the bell housing, and then use the 16* mark to set the reference into the bell housing. Basically we took a sharp file, and cut a line in the aluminum housing as our timing pointer.

Having a mill with a rotary table is the key to this.

Hope this explains the process.

Rocky (a.k.a. Chuck)