The Forestry Forum

Good Evening. Need a little advice on the counterweights on the balancer / cam gears. I was planning to do an in-frame on the my Franklin 132. Once I got the pistons and rods out of the way, I could see stress cracks on all the crankshaft journals. I had a military refurbished Game Goat 3-53, so I started the process of swapping everything from the old engine onto the Game core. 

The original engine had the hydraulic pump driven off of the camshaft gear at the rear of the engine. Nothing was driven off the balance shaft gear, but there was a healthy pile of nut-locking plates, spacers, and a spare drive plate for a hydraulic pump bolted to the gear. I weighed all the plates, spacers and drives from each side, and they are almost exactly the same weight. I Understand what the counter weights do, but is the stack of "stuff" on the balancer shaft necessary? It doesn't seem that it would affect balance?
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It's a rotating part, weight needs to be the same or you will get vibrations that will damage the engine. If it was me I'd be using the Gama engine parts to rebuild the origional. Those surplus engines are made with an aluminum block and don't stand up well in forestry applications.  

In retrospect, that would've definitely been the smart move-but I've never been accused of being smart! I think I was just tired of looking at that Gammagard engine sitting in the corner of the barn for the past 20 years! Switching out the end plate, all the gears to put the blower on the side that I wanted it, sourcing specialty gaskets for the oil pan and sleeves that go inside the water rings for the head has been quite the undertaking. I've got a friend with two complete 353s sitting in a junkyard, hopefully one of them has a good crank and gear train in it, and I'll put the original one back together and have it as a spare when the Gama engine craps out.

For the oil pan gasket,I just bought 2 of them & cut both & added  the longer piece on. I believe they have a 71 series oil pump which makes it a longer one. I'm on my 2nd Gama in my Hahn in 25 years. I'v gotten many hours out of them.