rlm328

The lower balance shaft is leaking like a sieve. What are the pluses and minuses of deleting the balance shafts on a car that spends 95% of its time on the track?

tconn

Chris White

'+' nothing happens
'-' something happens

lots of info out there with the search function.

KuHL 951

I won't comment of the delete question but your leak problem might be an easy one. Put your finger on the plug at the rear of the BS housing. If it feels loose and wobbly I think that's your massive leak. The inner seal shrinks back and the plug gets loose. The good news is many people have had great luck just cleaning the plug well and glopping on an oil-resistant sealant over the plug. If you like pain and working in tight places go for a full reseal which is much much easier with the engine out of the car.

95ONE

I've seen balance belts take out timing belts when old/worn/loose

small loss of power, and 20lbs of extra weight
extra work when changing anything in the front like timing, water pump, oil pump, etc.

Positives... only to not hear somebody blame you for removing your balance shafts and causing the head gasket, or anything else to fail

944obscene

Ohhhhh , yeah. That seal. Might be a source for my leak I've seem to have sprung! I was convinced that it was something else, but I'm gonna check that now. Thanks for reminding me! lol (goes out to look around timing cover)

CarbonRevo

The BS end cap seals are actually on the backsides of the housings. Not sure how accessible the top one (near the turbo) is from underneathe. It's asy to reach with the intake off though. The bottom one can be reached from under the car.

My 951 did the same thing. It was fine all year last year, then a 100 miles after I put on my Vitesse MAF...it started leaking like crazy onto my crossover. Sure enough, it was the BS end cap.

I didn't even realize it when I had my S2 apart the first time...but the PO went ahead and did the sealant trick for me. It's a bandaid that actually seems to last for quite a while.

black951

one minus to consider- my friend deleted the shafts on his 3.0 track car and the extra vibration caused his oil pick up tube to brake and fall off- toasted his main bearings- i didn't see it personally-so im not 100% sure exactly what broke- but hes a BMW/Porsche mechanic and recommended i keep mine. I was wondering if a dry sump would fix the possibility of this happening.

David Floyd

Pick up tubes fail on stock engines also

tconn

My new engine is being built sans balance shafts, for a number of reasons.

YZ250

rlm328: Your car has power to burn. Why not keep the balance shafts and not worry about the vibration?

black951

good to know- thanks. is this common? any reason why they fail?

fortysixandtwo

They vibrate, become brittle and crack. It goes down hill quickly after the crack has formed.

I doubt anyone here can give you the true source of the damaging vibraition. It could be anywhere from factory tolerances to driving style to lack of maintenace. The number of failures are too low and the number of variations are too high.

Chris White

Every engine that I have had to fix (3) due to the oil pick up failure had the balance shaft delete 'feature'.
Even Porsche tried to delete the balance shafts on the LeMans cars and went back to a balance shaft set up.

fortysixandtwo

To date, I've only had two engines apart, both were stock. One had signs that the pick up tube was on its way to failure the other was fine.
I guess I should also mention that the one in good condition was out of a very low milage engine.