they do exist, to my surprise. because all i've ever read, L18 come with fully counterweighted crank. maybe i don't read enough lol




weight is 11kg (measured it with bathroom scale, so, not dead accurate). 5 flywheel bolt.

very rare I think it must be very early or late when they used old stock or maybe extra economy??? thats 3 to 3.5kg difference

it's from bluebird 910, so i guess very late. stroke is same, 78mm

and the flywheel attached to the engine weighs 12.8 kg. thats hefty

fidanza is exxy I know but offer 12lbs flywheel! 5.545kg

haa thats light.

There's another crank too I think?
We pulled a crank from a smoked L18 one time. Iirc, it had like square shaped cranks. The guy we pulled it for wanted a different one so it would be stronger? It was a good while ago now, and I wasn't paying much attention as L's aren't really my thing.

square shaped crank, do you mean the counterweight is square?

All of l18 cranks i've seen on the internet (mostly on the510realm.com ) have 8 counterweights. At first i am skeptical, i thought maybe somehow that is a l16 crank as l16 only have 4 counterweights. Then i measured the stroke (using a ruler, so not really accurate). It's 78mm.

After speaking to a well known L series Guru by the first name of Mark and rally guys regularly hand over 5k aud for L series head work only. He said that at 78-86mm strokes non counterweight cranks of top quality like Nissan have no issues with RPM providing all is well executed.
The L blocks are of very high quality cast iron much better than CA engines and you know this when you grind of machine anything on these block how tough the cast iron is on L series and A series castings compared to later cast iron block which use alot of carbon for lighter weight and Fe iron savings.

BRE used full counterweight cranks for their 10,000rpm plus L16 and L18 engines with 6 bolts at the rear flange while LZ used more. Yet BRE rarely if ever experienced crank issues and even today builders keeping their L builds under 9000rpm have no issues with 8 valve 195-230hp NA builds.

On the CA block different story the blocks have no skirts they do have more casting on the walls of the block not cylinder walls but also use the mains girdle to avoid to much crank flex. The L series has changed my view over 10 years of hearing stories from L lovers & enthusiasts.

I wonder which or what L series crank is the go to use in the ford crossflow engines?
I've become good mates with a bloke who has a bit of a cortina problem. (owns like 20 of them) I'm going to convince him to build a wild 1600 with an L series crank, and SD23 followers for his UKDM MKII GT wagon After we finish adding an SC14 to his 2ltr sohc engine. (Someone fell in love with supercharging after riding in a certain white supercharged datsun 1200. lol)