Manx Club

The turnkey 1914 cc engine that I`m considering purchasing, comes with a lightened flywheel. What are the advantages/disadvantages with running a lightened flywheel rather than a standard one? I think it has something to do with RPM. For the record, my buggy will be mostly a street cruiser...maybe a little off road when I get a wild hair, but mostly street.

When I built my 1914, I also used a lightened flywheel. At the time I discussed this with my friends, and I wanted to keep the stock weight flywheel, but they talked me out of it, and I am glad. The idea behind the stock flywheel, is that the extra weight makes for smoother idle, as well as more torque off the line, as momentum built up by the heavy flywheel tends to keep the engine turning as you let out the clutch. My thought was that I wanted this extra torque off the line, particularly offroad. The idea behind the lightened flywheel, is that it lets the engine respond quicker to acceleration, as the mass that it needs to move, is less. The fact that you are building a larger than stock engine, means that it will have more torque anyway, and as it is going in a car that is substantially lighter than the stock bug, torque will be just fine with the lightened flywheel, as well as providing you with snappy acceleration. I strongly suggest you combine this with a counterbalanced crank to reap maximum benefits. You will be surprised at how quickly the engine winds up compared to your stock 1500 or 1600.

Most of the time you would use a lightened flywheel when you use a heavy crank.. that where the whole idea for the lightend fly wheel came from.. Rob

If you plan on doing rock crawling, use the stock heavy flywheel. If you want quick RPM and snappy acceleration use a light flywheel. Having a 1914 in a lightweight buggy, you won't miss the weight.