Balancer shalf

Hi HPA team and members

New member and 1st time poster here. Question - on a V configuration engine, in my case a Holden VN 3.8L series 1 V6 which has a balancer shalf to eliminate the out of balance of this engines V configuration would you remove this or disable it by removing the drive gear to the balancer shaft? Obviously it has a parasitic drain on the motor but what downside is there by disabling in a fairly stock motor in a dedicated club race car? Or is it so negligible its not worth playing with. I look forward to any advice and guidance. For those in NZ have a great long weekend.

Cheers Budget Racer

IIRC, this was based on the 231 CID GM (Buick?) off-fire engine that had a 90 degree V6, and the balance shaft was because of the secondary vibrations.

If so, you should be fine removing it at the cost of a little additional vibration.

Might be wrong, though, so the more information you can find on the engine (LN3, or maybe L27, I believe) the better - I know it made a reasonable performance engine back in the day, so should be some info' on it online.

Hi Gord thanks for your time replying to my post.

I followed your advice and did some research on the balancer shalf. Was pros and cons both ways so I eventually decided to leave it in place and functioning, despite the slight parasitic drain on power. My rationale was the engine is effectively a stocker and will just be in place whilst I build up a new race motor.

Was good just sorting a stock motor first which has given me a chance to get familiar with the motor and rebuilding etc before I tackle the race engine which doesn't have a balancer shaft and has been modded for this removal.

Enjoying the great learning modules in the engine building starter courses I purchased.

Thanks once again for your time and input.

Cheers Malcolm

Hi Malcolm i regularly remove the Balance shaft as part of building std stock engines, you will need to balance the bottom end rotating assembly to do this and grub screw the oil feeds to it, on the dyno i notice a very small gain in acceleration and an even smaller gain in Hp, so not really worth doing to a std engine unless you want to spend the money on balancing it, best bang for buck is a higher ratio rocker set and a good camshaft like kelfords sell, oh and a good exhaust system is the key

Hi Ross

Thanks for taking the time out to respond, its appreciated.

I have decided to leave the balancer shalf in place on this motor, its just a stocker that's going in my race car to keep me having a club sprint car whilst I pull the race motor that's dropped a cylinder and give that the full rebuild. Interesting that it was only a small gain in acceleration and HP so obviously isn't too much of a parasitic drain.

Really appreciated your response.