For anyone looking for a UK engine specialist you could consider
http://www.engine-specialists.co.uk/ They are called Impulse Developments, based near Stockport, South Manchester. They have just completed a flywheel lightening and balancing for me, including the crank. Adrian there seems very knowledgeable on most engine jobs. I'll keep you updated on how it feels when I eventually get the engine started, but I don't anticipate any problems from what I've seen so far.
I took my Murena 2.2 flywheel to him, having found the company on Google. I live near Manchester so it was easy to drop it off. He needed the crank as well in order to mount the complete assembly on his machine. 2 weeks later I've picked it up and the flywheel looks like new, including the previously badly corroded clutch surface. The balancing work extends as far as balancing the bolts which connect it to the crank, so attention to detail seems good. Ideally he would have liked to balance the whole engine, but I had to draw the line somewhere! His racing engine experience has taught him that a fully balanced engine will rev higher, be smoother and experience less bearing shell wear.
In chatting with him I also discovered that he can repair cracked cast iron manifolds and end up with a barely visible weld, followed by skimming the mating surface with the head so that future stresses on it are reduced, although this would involve an initial extra cost of making a jig for our manifolds. Even more interestingly, he has a lot of experience of repairing cracked alloy heads. He uses annealing and a special gas welding technique which gives very deep heat penetration in order to give a strong repair.
This is my only experience of using them and I'm no engineering expert, but if anyone is looking to have this type of work done they might be worth considering. I had already had the head done by another company in Bolton, again very good, but they weren't able to lighten the flywheel. Impulse can do both jobs.
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