Project Stock to Not: Installing a Fluidampr Balancer

Installing a Fluidampr Balancer on Our ‘94 Dodge RAM 2500 

If you’ve been following along the past few months, we’ve been in a mad rush to get our Stock To Not 12-valve Cummins project going as quickly as possible. We’ve upgraded everything on this engine to make it support our 700hp goal and then some, but there’s one piece that we’ve been wanting to do, but haven’t yet—replacing the truck’s stock harmonic balancer. Cue Nick from Fluidampr to save the day.

Today we’re going to install a diesel performance Fluidampr kit on our RAM! These dampers never need to be rebuilt or retuned, as it self-tunes in real time to the harmonics of the engine throughout the entire RPM range. It’s built to last the life of the engine and is also a SFI-certified product that is made in the USA.

This kit includes the damper itself (part #960311), full power kit with extended bolts (part #300008) , and the crank sensor relocation kit (part #300003). Make sure you have a powerful ½-inch impact and/or a barring tool to keep your crank from spinning over, and a torque wrench to finish the project.

As you can see, we opted to take the intercooler, radiator, and fan clutch off so we had a big open space to show this installation, but it isn’t necessary for installation.

Step 1: First, measure the stock crankshaft sensor height, and then remove the crusty stock damper and unbolt the crankshaft sensor away from its stock location. Ours may look a little weathered, but it honestly isn’t in too terrible of shape (the rubber is still between the two pieces of metal).
Step 2: Once you get the old bolts and damper off the truck, open up the full power kit and get the friction washer lined up with the bolt holes.
Step 3: Put anti seize on the bolts, washers, and torque plate.

Step 4: Next, put the beautiful Fluidampr up onto the crank, and install the torque plate, washers and bolts. Make sure to keep the chamfered side of the washers facing the head of the bolt

STEP 5: Set your trusty torque wrench to 125 lb-ft and tighten down the four bolts.

Step 6: Now that we’ve gotten the damper and full power kit installed, we need to get that crank sensor in its new location so we can read RPMs. You’ll need to take out the two stock bolts (pictured in the included instructions) and replace them with the provided mounting studs for the relocation kit.
Step 7: Make sure to keep in mind the stock gap measurement from earlier and set the sensor at the same height it was before.
There you have it! We’ve just walked you through the very simple, but important steps to adding a full Fluidampr kit on our ’94 RAM Stock to Not project. This damper made our rattly 12 valve not even move while it’s running. If these came factory with these trucks back in the day maybe the dash boards wouldn’t have gone so fast!
We want to thank Nick at Fluidampr for working with us on this project. We can’t wait to represent such an important product that a lot of people don’t realize the true value of in our realm. Here’s to having this engine running as smooth as possible through the abuse we shall put it through!

 

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