Got a FE short block in a car deal and pulled the pan and found a Scat crank and rod assembly. The numbers on the crank read, 9-427-3980-6490-24R with the number 05G0038 below that. Its located on the front throw. Am I wrong to assume its a Cast Steel 3.980 model? Has lightening pin holes throughout. H beam rods with Ross dome style pistons and looks very nice. Any help with ID would be appreciated. Thanks RJ
Since you seek confirmation on what you have, it is advertised as "cast steel" but is actually cast pearlitic/ferritic nodular iron, the same crankshaft grade of nodular invented by Ford in 1951 and used in nearly all cast Ford cranks since. Once the patents ran out it became the world standard grade of iron for crankshafts. Scat says "cast steel" because it sounds better and can therefore fetch more money.
Reading the part number it seems Scat has destroked the 428 crank from 3.984 to 3.980. Bummer. It's a good crank, as strong as factory stock.
dave funny you say that i noticed that they did that as well...
October 14 2008, 8:55 PM
and im contemplating on things ive heard and wonder if they had to shorten the stroke. granted were talking about .004" wich isnt much, but i had heard that they designed them to be internally balacned like a 390. thing of it was that they needed alot of balance work and was taking more than it was worth to balance one of these out. course things may have changed from the earlier days. barry whats your experience thought on this?
no reference to cast steel anywhere. That somewhat deceptive term comes from Eagle. In a couple spots they (Scat) do refer to the cast "9000 series" alloy as being "space age". I guess that means it was made after 1958.... ????
You are correct. They've dropped the "cast steel" advertising.
October 15 2008, 9:13 AM
High marks to Scat for removing the "steel" text from their "cast" crank labelling.
Thanks for mentioning this. I do recognzie that Scat was not likely the first to incorrectly use the term "cast steel" in their crankshaft advertising, but it was the brand that came closest to our FE, so it was singled out.
Also, Scat technical folk always referred to the formerly named "cast steel" crank as nodular iron, so it was clearly a marketing thing.
