No, not a quality issue. Just an age issue. It was a Ford damper and probably manufactured in the 60s or 70s. The rubber looked good with no cracks and the timing marks checked out fine when I originally put it on. But over time, the rubber must have shrunk or otherwise lost its adhesion and the outer ring started slipping.
Even new balancers can have this happen. ATI, for example, does offer a 10 year warranty, however they also go on about how a benifit to one of their dampers is that it's "rebuildable". Nothing to rebuild except the rubber......so caution is in order.
It was me re-setting my timing to the new slipped marks that caused the trouble, not the actual damper itself as it is a zero balance unit.
It ticked me off because:
1/ I ignored the warning signs once I had checked the timing and saw it was "fine".
2/ Only 1 piston was damaged, but they were FPP custom made units and I couldn't get another to match, so a whole overbore was required. A shame as the cylinder was not hurt.
3/ Interestingly, with the tons of smoke bellowing out one side pipe, a compression check showed exactly the same results in all cylinders. Only a leak-down check showed 1 cylinder as being bad. And it was ....top ring OK, second ring broken, ring land between 2nd ring and
oil ring had over 1 inch broken out of it and
oil seperator ring was in dozens of pieces, mostly in the
oil pan. I will not use Hastings rings again due to that oil seperator falling apart. Plus, the engine always smoked a little bit. Since the rebuild, no smoke at all. I totally suspect this is due to Speed-Pro rings.