"Actually, if you read the start of this thread it wasn't about "to balance or not", it was about the quality of advice that sometimes pops up on the forum..."
Gerry, Kendall, Kendell, etc-
I'm
assuming (which is probably a dumb move on my part) that with this entire thread you are refering to the
FAQ about removing balance gears, which was "written" by me.
What's interesting to me about this entire thread is that advice was NEVER
given. The information in that FAQ was simply a post (made by me) of how I removed the balance gears from a 14hp Kohler. Someone thought it was worthwhile information, and and recommended that Charlie put it in the FAQ, so he did. Having done this proceedure already once before, I see nothing wrong with this info being in the FAQ. More on THAT later...
While I can't agree more with your thoughts about these being "precision" machines (where hammers and chisels should NOT be used internally) I do have a couple of questions..
1) Have you ever broken apart a balance gear with a hammer and chisel? Have you ever seen how
little tapping it actually takes to break one of these things? While I obviously can't account for what happened to the person who "tweaked" the stubshaft doing this, perhaps he didn't tap it on an "open web" of the gear, I can tell you it take very little effort to break one of these gears apart.
These gears break apart with a little "tap, tap, tap"...not the "beating on the inside of an engine" as you say which makes one envision full-blown hammer swings. In my case, when the gears did break, they crumbled....no....folded inward. There was no shattering, no flying shrapnel, etc. It was really a very gentle process. Without becoming inflamatory here, in my opinion it seems somewhat "wrong" to question something you've never tried yourself.
2) Suppose you've got a good running Kohler. Probably the original build to the tractor that has no extra noises or smoke when it runs. By chance you have removed the oil pan, maybe to replace a bad oil-pan gasket, and in doing so you find that the balance gears are loose on their stub-shafts. NOW WHAT????? I think we all agree that we should never just put the engine back together and just use it as such.
Are we all supposed to "man-up" as you put it and tear apart a perfectly good running engine to recitfy this balance-gear issue? I know I wouldn't leave those gears in there. I've heard a lot of stories about good-running engines that lost their balance gears (through the side of the engine block!) which to me implies that the balance gears and stub-shafts wear out more quickly than the other moving components of these engines. If you ask me, we should inspect the condition of the balance gears on engines that we do not know a history of as it is a fact that they will find a way "out" of the engine when their time comes. Personally I would much rather own an engine in which the previous owner has removed the balance gears (Yes, even via the method described in the FAQ.......GASP!!!) than an engine that has loose balance gears of unknown condition.
I know you're of the "leave the balance gears in there" camp, and honestly I don't see anything wrong with that. I prefer that they are NOT in any of my engines, but that's just me. A good friend of mine said it very well when he said that he preferred to keep the balance gears in his engines, but specified that they need to be in good physical condition or they WILL come through the side of the block. We disagree on "to balance gear or not" but agree that we wouldn't leave loose gears inside an engine. So, the question remains.. Good running engine with loose balance gears.....now what???
Finally, you're proabably not going to find any
printed documentation coming directly from Kohler saying that these gears should be removed from their engines. Think about it... In today's "litigation society" what company in their right mind would print a document saying that something inside their engines is doomed for failure?? We already know that Kohler produced these engines both "with" and "without" the balance gears, not to mention that we've heard from people who formerly worked at Kohler telling us that they do not include the balance-gears in their rebuilds. That's good enough data for me to feel comfortable not to have them in any of my engines.
At this point I could and tell you what I think of this ENTIRE thread, but I'm going to keep THAT opinion to myself!
