Any engine can, will and should benefit from dynamic balancing!! WE ONLY BALANCE VW AND PORSCHE AIRCOOLED ENGINES!!!!! Not Hondas or Harleys!

There is absolutely nothing on the planet as good as a free revving, well balanced engine, it keeps wear to a minimum, and helps keep fasteners and complete engines together over a much longer period of time. One gram (the weight of a paperclip) may not seem like much static, in your hand, but put it in motion, and give it some radius and you'll be amazed at what it can weigh. An out of balance engine can consume parts like a shredder, and can even break exhaust flanges, intake manifolds and engine mounts by sending harmonics throughout the vehicle,  that can even be felt in the drivers seat!

Our CNC dynamic balancer accurately balances complete rotating assemblies to within .2 ounce inches, which is the standard for Indy, CART, and NASCAR engines,  turn 9,000RPM for hours. The CNC addition allows us to print a "Bobweight card" for the entire engine which displays the amount of dynamic balance both before and after the balancing is completed (it can be hundred of pounds different) and it illustrates the weight of each individual part, and shows connecting rod weights in, overall, big end, and small end and even the weight of rings, wrist pins, retainers and etc. Our engine customers benefit from having their engine balanced to our "Race spec" or "Intermediate spec" set of tolerances as standard. EVERY ENGINE WE BUILD IS BALANCED, even stock!! Even a 36HP!

For customers that have their own engine parts, we also offer this service to you, even though we are not assembling your engine. You will still receive the dynamic balance and bob weight cards, and have a choice of 3 levels of balance tolerance:

"Performance" This spec is for basically stock engines, or for those who want a balance job that will keep their engine from "self consumption". This is recommended for every engine, even stock, and even a 36 horse! The dynamic tolerances are set to .7 oz in. Connecting rods are balanced overall to within 1 gram (not end for end) and pistons are balanced to within 1.5 gram. Budget $140.00 for this service and allow a 14 day turnaround according to our work load. 911 engine customer’s budget 200.00 for this process and a 14 day turnaround.

"Intermediate" This is the most used tolerance; it allows for a well balanced engine, is affordable and provides balance good enough for a sustained 6,000 RPM engine. Dynamic Balance tolerances are set to .4 oz in and Connecting rods are weighed end to end to within .05 gram, and pistons to within .75 gram This is the most typical state of balance. Type 4 customers budget $190.00 for this balance job, and allow a 14 day turnaround time. 911 engine customers budget 275.00 for this service and a 14 day turn around time.

"RACE" Our RACE balance is unlike anyone in the business, mostly due to the fact that no other shop in the aircooled industry has a balancer that parallels ours! Our RACE balance is good for 7500-9000 RPM engines . This is the highest state of balance we offer and we maximize the equipment with tolerances of .2 Oz In This balance we take everything to the extremes, Connecting rods are balanced to .1 gram end for end per set of 4, and pistons to within .1 gram per set of 4. This balance takes a lot more time than any other tolerance and is not a flat rate service. Plan on spending $275.00 for this balance service, turnaround time is 2-3 weeks for the Type 4 customers. This is a lot of work and is very time consuming to say the least. 911 engine customers budget 350.00 for this service.

Type I and Type IV cooling fan welding and balance service-

We also offer the Tig Welding and balancing for the radial cooling fan used on the stock Type I or converted Type IV  engine. This is a flat rate service and is accomplished for 40.00 per cooling fan. Please note that we only weld OEM German cooling fans and reserve the right to inspect your cooling fan for defects and issues prior to completing our service. Please note that the welding and balancing of any fan is no 100% guarantee that it will not fail, but it does drastically reduce the chances of a failure. We have made special fixturing for our balancer especially for this purpose. All cooling fans must be clean and free from dirt and grease upon arrival here or charges will be increased.

With any state of balance, you receive the balance sheets and ALL PARTS ARE INDEXED and stamped for proper assembly! We even balance and index clutch bolts for reassembly! Balanced assemblies that are not indexed for reassembly as they were on the balancer are worthless!

This is a balance spec sheet. Each job that we complete on our balancer is fully printed out to show before and after results. This clearly illustrates just how out of balance your engine was when we started and how well it was balanced when we finished. The sheet that is posted is of an engine that is severely out of balance. If assembled it would not have even idled smoothly! Most jobs are not this bad that we see initially, but all are this good when they leave! Even if your parts are new and balanced from their respective manufacturers, they are not balanced as an assembly- Have them balanced as an assembly!

Keep in mind that I purchased our balancer after having a long hard relationship with local machine shops providing correctly balanced engine assemblies when we would sub the work out. It got so bad that we had to inspect every single piece and even had holes drilled completely through pistons!!

If you desire to have us balance your project we MUST have the following parts shipped to us, they must be clean, free of oil and with all other machining processes completed. If you send us these parts dirty, or missing parts we will charge you more for our services!

Here is a list of what we need from you:

• Crankshaft
• crankshaft gears, spacers and retaining hardware (do not install them on the crankshaft)
• Gear removal adds 35.00 to the cost of the balance job!
• Flywheel
• Gland nut or flywheel bolts
• Pressure plate
• Front crank pulley TI and 911 (Cooling Fan TIV ONLY)
• Connecting rods
• Connecting Rod bearings
• Pistons& pins
• Piston rings
• Teflon buttons/wrist pin clips

Some customers write to ask us if we can “Balance their crank”- that’s worthless! We have found that most imbalances come from the other parts of the engine, especially flywheels and pressure plates. IT ALL MUST BE BALANCED AND INDEXED! We only do only complete assemblies for VW, Porsche and Pinzgauer Aircooled engines- nothing else.

Here is a testimonial from one of our balance customers:

TYPE 1 ENGINE BALANCING

Jake, I just wanted to write and thank you for the most complete and professional engine balance job that I have ever had done.  I have been involved with Air-Cooled  VW’s since 1976 with my first car being a 1967 bug.  I have worked as a VW engine/transmission builder   from 1979-86   at a shop and I currently run a small VW  machine shop out of my home as a side business.  I have had many engine assemblies “balanced” by local shops.  I say balanced loosely due to the fact that after getting my parts back from Jake I now know what a real balance job is. 

 The parts came back from being shipped across the country in perfect condition.  The attention to detail was astounding.  I’ve never been asked to send so many parts for balancing before.  But after I got the parts back with a print out of the rotating weights it all makes sense.  This is the first time I have ever had the flywheel come back with the pressure plate bolts indexed, piston pins actually marked   to their respective pistons.  They way they remove metal is also outstanding.    On the crank, flywheel, pressure plate, they actually shave material off instead of drilling a bunch of holes.  The pistons are actually milled in a wide area that looked better than a factory job.  

I live just outside of a large city (Seattle, Way.) and there are many shops that claim that they do a good job of balancing engines.  But after calling them and being asked how many cylinders does it have I knew they were not place that I wanted to use.

It was money well spent to ship my parts across the country to get balanced by R.A.T. and I will not hesitate to use  their services again in the near future. 

Tim Hancock

Sparkmaster1,  STF Engine  Rebuild Forum Moderator.