Crank Balancing

[DANP85]

Sorry if this has been covered before. Can I get away with not balancing my crank/flywheel assembly on my single carb single port 1776 which I’m about to assemble? Crank is brand new Scat counterweight & flywheel is DPR stock German lightened. I can do my piston/rod balance at home.

All the local machine shops where I am down under, specialise in V8s & inline engines and don’t have anything to do with aircooled VWs. I do recall reading somewhere a while back an old post from Jake Raby about getting balancing done by a machine shop that works on VW engines and has the right tooling otherwise leave it alone or it could be worse after the balancing.

I don’t know which way to go with it all, many thanks in advance!

[Pruneman99]

For a single carb, single port, I assume your not building this thing to wind up.

Idk about the the Scat cranks, but my last EMPI 4340 was almost perfect out of the box. My 8 dowelled German flywheel definitely needed some taken off. The machinist was very surprised how close the crank was out of the box.

That being said, sure, you can just put it together. Thousands of engines have been put together like that. For a low RPM engine and if machine work was very difficulty to obtain, I would probably just go ahead.

If it vibrates like a cheap motel mattress, you'll have to take it back down, but I think you will be ok.

Now if this is a race engine, but you need to maintain the stock carb and single port heads for your class, I'd bite the bullet and send it out.

[DANP85]

[Pruneman99]

For just a weekend ice cream getter, I would just put it together and hope for the best.

Unfortunately good air-cooled machine shops are dying out. I'm lucky where I am I can still get specialist ACVW work. Most places around the world it is unavailable, and you have to ship. That gets pricy when you need to send a heavy crank and flywheel across the country and back.

Now I'm sure I'll get posters saying I'm giving you bad advise, so I'm just telling you what I would do in your position. Obviously it would be better to get it balanced.

[Ohio Tom]

There is no reason that a shop that does V8 stuff cannot do a VW crank and flywheel assembly. It requires moving one bearing support on the machine.
I have watched my local V8 shop do my VW cranks. Nothing special about it.





VW balanced everything even on stock motors.
You should too. Don' t go cheap on your motor. you will pound out the bearings otherwise.

[mark tucker]

I have seen balances that will not do a vw crank with flywheel ...and only v8 cranks that dont have flywheels on them..
I did my vw cranks on the same machine I did 632 cu race motors and everything else I needed to/wanted to balance. if the shope does v8s' & inline engines they probably could but do not know how to do it....so thats a good reason to by pass them.

[oprn]

Does the crank and flywheel have evidence of being factory balanced? I have no idea if SCAT does that before shipping. If it has drillings from a balance job then it likely has been done already. My new crank and flywheel did not and took a lot of drilling and grinding to get it right.
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