At the point when I last posted on this thread I had a motivating partner in this project in the US.
He subsequently died (as did Dave Friend), so things have been further slowed. Ben, too, has been slowed down because he bought a new business that's keeping him tied down. Complicate that with his marriage and now the birth of his first child, I don't know when he'll find time.
I have been pressing on as best I can. My visit to the US enabled me to talk to a piston maker, my next task is to actually make a model of the pistons so they can be measured to get the compression ratio right. They will be very complex in the crown and I can't see any way to get the measurements other than to make them up.
I want to do this before I go to the US again in May, I will take the models with me for the piston manufacturer to work from.
In the meantime, we have had (as mentioned on another thread here) harmonic balancers made for the Hemi 6. These come from BHJ in California and the first shipment of these left the US yesterday.
They are not as complex as ATI's dampers, but BHJ have done a lot of work with 6-cylinder dampers the past year or two (again, further info on this is seen in another thread) and they have separated the alternator/water pump belt pulley from the inertia ring. This enables the inertia ring to properly do its job.
They have also done some work with the elastomer and have aimed this damper at cutting down the 6,200rpm harmonics and working well with the engine to about 7,500rpm.
The separation of the pulley and inertia ring can be seen in the pics, a keen eye of someone familiar with Hemi 6s would also note that this damper still enables the fitment of the factory pulleys for power steering and air conditioning.
I will be posting progress on the piston models over the next month or two.
