Well, maybe..now I see conversations on the internet pertaining to chromoly flywheel starter ring gear hardness vs starter motor gear hardness potentially causing problems..
On the new chromoly flywheel, many people have issues with the hardness of the chromoly vs. the hardness of the starter teeth. And, yes, if it isn't done properly they will definitely have problems. We've already learned the right way to do it because we've already been building chromoly flywheels for our own race cars. The teeth on our flywheel will have the toughness of chromoly, but have the same ductility of the steel ring gear we currently use on our aluminum flywheels...
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I had a 10 lb Jun chromoly...the only headache I had with it was the starter teeth issue...the starter chewed the teeth on the FW and so after about 1 yr, when you turned the ignition key the starter wouldn't catch the flywheel teeth to turn it over. I'd have to either roll the car forward in neutral so the teeth meshed and then turn the key or do several attempts at turning the ignition key. That FW is out and I'm running a stock ITR FW now...I had enough...
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From Larry Widmer at the Endyn website:
"Stronger and more brittle isn't especially a good thing. The real problem that seems to plague the users of the chromoly flywheels is cracking that begins at the starter teeth. The teeth are exceptionally hard (much harder than the low grade teeth bolted to aluminum flywheels) and they don't get along too well with the hardened teeth of the starter motor. That being said, there are several other issues that we covered a while back (and no owners of chromoly flywheels refuted them), I'd go with aluminum.
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On a flywheel, you can't have hi-grade steel contacting and wearing with hi-grade steel. This is just one of the incompatibility problems that exists between the flywheel teeth and those of the starter. Those components will destroy each other in a relatively short time span. On the flywheels, once you have created a tiny fracture at the OD, the crack will continue to spread into the center, especially since there is considerable pressure (pressure-plate and disk) and rotational forces working on it. This is a potential disaster waiting to happen....
I'm posting some comments from threads on non-Viper forums, because I've just found them, and there does seem to be some things to get right when manufacturing chromoly flywheels..
Who'd have thought? Just when I got interested, I do a search and find this stuff..(!)
So I'll ask Dan what he can tell us about these concerns pls..
