Stroke And StrokersStroke is simply the distance between the centerlines of the main and rod journals times two. Adding some arm is the quickest way to do it. Want to build torque? Add some decent heads to feed those extra inches and you'll have a monster on your hands. Stroker cranks have been around for many years, but never with the options, variety, and price levels seen today. Once the aftermarket became serious about replacement cranks, stroker versions became a natural offshoot, as the additional tooling and machining costs were minimal. Whereas a stock-configuration engine bolts together as the factory intended, stroker combinations require a little more science.
A stroker crank-and-rod package needs to fit within the real estate available inside the block, which often requires block clearancing. Since the stroked crank shoves the piston higher in the bore, a piston with a lower compression height (the distance from the center of the wristpin to the piston deck) is required. A stroker crank also yanks the piston further down the bore, so clearance between the piston skirts and crank counterweights is also a concern. These criteria should already be scienced out when buying pistons designed for the specific stroker combination being considered.
Other factors that need to be addressed with strokers include balancing the assembly, which may require changes to the crank counterweights; increased average piston speed at a given RPM; and, with some engine designs, avoiding excessive compression ratio from the added displacement squeezing into the same size combustion chambers. Many suppliers offer balanced stroker assemblies for popular engine combos, making a stroker build nearly as simple as putting together a stocker.
Crank Life CycleIt may seem as though a crank that passes a Magnaflux test for cracks and has had its journals reground is as good as new, but this isn't necessarily so. All metals have finite fatigue life, which basically means a crank can be loaded and unloaded a certain number of times until it breaks. How many cycles the part lasts until failure is directly related to the amount of stress or load it is under, even if that is much lower than the ultimate tensile strength of the material.
Fatigue life can be nearly indefinite if the load cycles are below a critical level, referred to as the endurance limit. What this means to us is that a thirty-year-old crank with an unknown history is a gamble in a high-performance application. If it's a steel 440 Mopar crank out of grandpa's Chrysler Newport, for instance, it may have never seen cycle loads to measurably diminish its fatigue life. On the other hand, it could have been out of cousin Bubba's nitrous'd mud-bog truck and already fatigued to the edge of failure. It's not like we're telling you something you don't already know here; if a part has already had the heck beaten out of it, chances are it's probably about to break.
As material strength increases, so generally does fatigue life and the part's endurance limit. Higher-quality cranks will last longer and take more abuse before failure-again, a no-brainer, but backed by metallurgical science. Fatigue failure generally begins to appear as minute surface cracks, which develop into fractures under repeated or fluctuating stresses. Processes such as nitriding or shot-peening put the outside surface of the metal into a compressed load, improving the surface strength and increasing fatigue life. If the engine is being built for serious horsepower or high rpm, or for use with nitrous, blowers, or in endurance racing, you may want to think seriously about crank selection. A stock cast crank may survive some heroic numbers for a few pulls on the dyno, but over the long haul, the economy of that choice may prove to be foolish savings.
By Steve Dulcich
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