On my 65 Chevelle....

Originally a 327 car and I am in the midst of replacing with a 350. After some research, I found out that the stock lower P/S bracket will interfere with an 8" harm. balancer. (This is what origianlly came with the engine)

Is it OK to go with the 6 3/4" balancer to gicve me some more clearance?

I presume the 67 and 68 PS bracket is the same. We replaced the original 307 in my son's 68 with a 350 and an 8in balancer. BRACKET WOULDN'T FIT!!!! So, we did some very carefull grinding-fitting-grinding-fitting until it just cleared the 8in balancer (I'm talking about .030-.040 clearance). I feel that with the absolute minimum grinding that we did, the strength of the bracket was not significantly compromised. We could have had a piece welded to the back side of where we removed the metal to assure the integrity of the bracket, but we rolled the dice and put it all together with the metal removed. Its been a year and all is fine so far. This is my son's ONLY daily transportation. The pump is still mounted solid, the balancer has never touched the bracket and all seems to be good.

Now I'm curious about the question. Why wouldn't the V1015 6 3/4" pictured here work on a 350? Wouldn't that solve the problem?
http://www.ventureproducts.com/Picturedbalancercatalog.htm

NPDs small 2004 Edition catalog has a bracket pictured that may work for you. Maybe someone can post a picture of it as I'm sure many folks have or will run into the same problem as you.
It is notched out with a piece welded in for the clearance and strength.
I ran into the same problem on my 65 with a 400 SB and was getting ready to grind and weld as DZ mentioned when I found one in my pile of spare parts... At that time I thought that the bracket I found was a bracket that someone already modified for the same reason I needed it for.

I was so happy to see it as I did'nt want to cut up the original bracket or spend the time messing it up! Many months later I seen the one in the catalog and decided that the one I found was probably after market or maybe a (stock GM) piece still not sure? It looks like the one pictured and worked perfect. Hope this info helps.
DANO
I should add that I was using all of the original brackets and manifolds (no headers) that came stock on my 283 as to keep things looking as stock as possible.

I think a big block bracket is the same but clearenced to accept the larger balancer you can't tell the difference.

On my 64 I ran into this problem with my ZZ4 but went to a Zoops setup and a remote PS system.

I have NOT been able to find a parts book listing for a PS bracket for a 65-68 L-79 327. The L-79 got the 8in balancer, thus, it would also had to have had a PS bracket that was designed to clear an 8in balancer. Right?
Regardless, we modified the bracket on my son's 68 VERY carefully (so that it didn't look cobbled up) and now that it's installed, I defy anyone to notice the notch that we made in it. We tried hard to make it look as if Chev installed it at the factory like that.

Im putting a 350 in place of my 307. Will i run into this problem?

Oh yeah. My car is a 72

Again the original question was:
"Is it OK to go with the 6 3/4" balancer to gicve me some more clearance?"
So why not? There's a company in Texas that owes me some money on a balancer, but a whole 'nother problem. Dang near forgot about that.

blaster,
No, this should not be a problem for you. This is only unique to 68-earlier SB cars. In 69, everything on the engine changed.

John,
That answer is yes, a 6 3/4 balancer can physically be installed on a 350 and everything would work. But on a 350+ engine, I would prefer to use the bigger balancer because of the greater need for dampening crankshaft vibrations. If a 350 engine were very professionally balanced by a good machine shop, I would feel more comfortable using the smaller 6 3/4 balancer. If nothing else, the smaller balancer could be installed and drive the car for a while to see how everthing goes. If all is well, leave it. If not, then the 8in could be swapped and the PS bracket modified as necessary. Sorry, I SHOULD have said all of this the first time.

One more time the SB and the BB are the same bracket one is clearenced for the 8" balancer. :rolleyes: