Boom #10, broke the ATI SuperDamper hub

Intro  Boom #1  Boom #2  Boom #3  Boom #4  Boom #?  Boom #6  Boom #7  Boom #8  Boom #9  Boom #10

And now for something completely different!  The cog drive for the ys-trim blower has been causing problems.  Alan Blaine of Blaine Fabrication and I put our heads together to develop a blower mount and idler pulley that would resist the flex inherent in the Vortech parts.  Initial results at the strip were promising, but then all the teeth got sheared off the belt.  Again.  I thought we had to go back to the drawing board, but it turned out that the hub for my ATI damper split.

Time for serious measures.  Using the 'net, I hooked up with Lonnie Pavis of Lonnies Performance Automotive, who set me up with a hub featuring a small block ID and a big block OD.  This gives the hub a seriously beefy cross section.  The hub is also double keyed, so the engine came out again for a trip to Mike Blackstone, who cleaned up the crank snout and punched in the second keyway.  The new hub was a bugger to press on - I broke 3 "tools", well, one home made piece of all-thread followed by two "Old Forge" tools, all of which snapped like a twig.  Mike offered to loan me the installer they use for Ben Watson's Pro Stocker (the middle tool in the pic below).  Deal!!!  It worked fine, as does the new hub.

Lonnie also set me up with an ATI front cover with the seal opening hogged out.  There isn't much meat on this seal, so it's very thin and fragile.  You'll need a decent tool to press it in without boogering it up.  After messing up the seal that came with the cover, I discovered an equivalent sold by the NAPA chain, p/n 22306.