what are the pros and cons of removing the balance shaft?

 

From my understanding, the balance shaft is in place to help correct some of the problems with an inline 4 engine. The way an I4 opperates causes vibrations in the engine. Therefore, the balance shaft was introduced to correct these vibrations by creating a force equal and opposite to those created by the engine. While a balance shaft does indeed reduce these vibrations, it's at a cost. The movements of the balance shaft causes friction and a decrease in performance of the engine.

I really don't know the figures over exactly how much the vibration hurts the engines and how much horsepower is gained at its removal, though. Do some google searches or searches in some of these sites and lemme know what you find. Or if you decide to do it (the Eclipse I'm buying right now already has it removed), let me know the differences you see!

 

Oh, hey, I just saw that theres a current forum on this site if you wanna ask questions or read more up on this... Hope that helps!

https://mitsubishiforum.com/m_62141/tm.htm

 

I got this from nissan performance mag:

Inline four engines tend to be naturally imbalanced. They tend to vertically shake when the cylinders go through their firing order. Increasing the displacement of an inline four (bore and/or stroke), tends to make a four banger's vibrations extremely annoying. The QR25DE is blessed (some would say cursed) with a 100 mm stroke, one of the longest seen on an inline four currently in production. To eliminate the vibrations that such a long stroke would cause, Nissan added a set of balancer shafts to the QR engine. Balancer shafts are counterweights that spin at twice the engine speed to give a smooth feeling to the engine. Usually balancer shafts are integral to an engine design. i.e., hard to remove. Nissan, however, chose to place the balancer shafts in the oil pan, right where we can get our grubby little hands on them.

But why would we want to remove the balancer shafts in the first place? First, balancer shafts spin at twice the engine speeds; at 6,000 rpm, the balancer shafts are spinning at 12,000 rpm. At such a high rpm balancer shafts have a tendency to seize, something you do not want to happen to your performance car. Second, balancer shafts are operated via a short chain by the crank shaft so they basically consume some power from your engine. Removing the shafts should reduce power loss and divert it to the wheels. The power gained from balancer shafts removal (BSR) is not clear. Some have claimed a 7-8 hp increase.

Between 3,500 and 5,000 rpm there is an intense vibration/resonance on accelerating and engine braking. This has been reported by many Spec V owners who have done the BSR and have installed motor mount inserts. Most Spec V owners tend to get used to it after a while.

 

The maximum horsepower and torque output was almost 160 hp (159.74 to be exact) and 162.27 ft-lb respectively; a 3 hp and 2 lb-ft of torque over the last time we dynoed the car. We did not gain 7-8 hp as some have claimed. Even though maximum gains were small, the area under the curve in the mid and top range improved. Between 3500-5000rpm the Spec V gained an average of 2.4 hp and 2.85 ft-lb of torque. In the top end, the engine had about the same gains.

here is a link with more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_shaft

 

No one seems to have any problems with doing this except for engine vibration.

 

I had it done to 2 of my cars, really didnt notice any different kind of vibration. Removing the b/s belt also eliminates any kind of b/s belt failure