Had an interesting talk with Ken Kalina of Kalina Machine.... He was curious why I didn't want to turn my crank. I replied that I heard that the cranks are hardened and that people have had problems with them after they turn them. He claims that "to his knowledge" there were only a few cranks ever produced that were hardened, and the mitu's weren't on the list.

Are our cranks hardened or not? If so, where is the proof of this? I've got 3 blocks now that all need cranks turned, no reason to thow them out if they can still be used!

My understanding is that the cranks have been nitrided. You can turn them and the will work. They will not have the nitride hardening anymore though.

See if you can get MITSUBISHI bearings to fit a turned DSM crank.

Exactly, You can get them re nitrided though, still not a good idea.

does nobody knife-edge their cranks anymore?

Is there any proof of this? I'd love to be able to show Ken that they are nitrided, and make sure he believes me!

FFWDConnection.com offers "the butcher" crank. Essentialy the same thing, though they made an intelligent variation. The leading edge of the crank is rounded, and they knife edge the trailing edge, much like an aircraft wing.

I'm pretty sure that this has no effect on the crank being nitrided, since that's more of an issue for the bearing wear surfaces.

Yes there are people out there that do still knife-edge their crankshafts. Why do you ask?

i just never see anybody talk about it anymore.. so since cranks were brought up, it was my chance to ask

As Rob & I discussed, I am still running a turned crank in my stroker. I don't obviously have a lot of miles on it but so far we are up too about 1500mi not including the 300 miles on the first go-round. BTW- I di not have it re-nitirded.

We will see...