PourinDiesel

After all of the Holiday hussle and bussle and the new baby,
and some unseasonal warm weather;
I have finally got around to installing the Horschel "Fluidampr" on my 2004.5 6 speed.

About a month or so back Peter from SOUTH BEND CLUTCH started a thread on DTR and the other website about this product.
We were both interested to see what kind of effect this product would have on a truck with excessive gear rattle.
After some conversation he was nice enough to buy me one of the fluid dampers!! THANKS PETER!!!

For those that do not drive SBC Dual Disc clutches:
Gear rattle is increased somewhat and can be heard and sometimes felt.
This is apparent at idle and while lugging gears this condition also becomes apparent.
As it has been said before there are no springs on the disks to dampen driveline shock when using dual disc clutches. There is simply not enough room for them.

Installation:
I removed the 4 13mm nuts that retain the fan shroud to the engine mounts.
That allowed me to reach the damper from under the truck.

I then untorqued the 4 15mm bolts from the front of the engine that retains the damper.
I was careful not to damage the famous tone ring that resides behind the OEM damper.

Installation was pretty simple, just slid the new piece up and onto the nose of the crankshaft.
Horschel has already drilled for the timing pin in their damper so it slides right on. This unit is also SFI certified for those needing to have a SFI'd damper.
Another nice thing is that the damper has a TDC mark just like the OEM unit.
Horschel unit weighs in around 23lbs.
The only issues I ran into were the belt routing after not paying attention to how it was sitting when I removed the original damper.
I referred to a tech manual and then had it down pretty quickly.

You will need a 1/2" torque wrench for installation and a long 16" or so 1/2" ratchet.

Results:
Well, I got it all back together again and started it up.
Right away I noticed alot of the gear noise at idle is gone, the truck sounds 'more stock' again.
I took it for a drive and there is definitely a difference;
it seems alot of the tranny noise is gone and vibration has drastically reduced.

I have only driven about 15 miles with the unit installed but so far it seems to have made a nice difference.
We'll see as the newness wears off and I will make some more reports.
So far its great though!!

John Faughn

There's a post just above that must of known you were coming .

PourinDiesel

Just weighed the stock damper; it is only 15lbs.

Don M

We dynoed one last Friday. Could not detect any power gains, but the auto tranny truck it was in did idle and was smoother. No change in the mid and upper RPM band.

Don~

BigBlue

Aren't trucks supposed to idle?

Don M

LOL. Where is my rope!

Lary Ellis (Top)

Now Don, you know better than to waste perfectly good rope like that

Don M

So is the dual disk clutch rattle gone or still there?

Don~

PourinDiesel

The rattle from pushing the clutch in? Yes.

Jeff K

How about the vibration through the tranny from 1500-1800 in 5th or 6th?

PourinDiesel

The vibrations are still there but dramatically reduced in my opinion.
The truck feels very different overall while driving.

signature600

So it's a worthwhile BOMB??

Chris

Jeff K

That's good to hear! I didn't think it would eliminate those vibrations completely, but I can get excited about "dramatically reduced"

PourinDiesel

Yeah,
I think its worthwhile piece.
I havent got more than 50 miles on it though.

I'll update more later on.

Thanks!

BigBlue

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!