Talked with Gary today and they are experimenting right now with Balancing the Crankshaft and rod so they can lose the Counterbalancer! That is good for 5lbs. of Rotating mass, WoW! Talk about a quick revving engine!! It looks like the experiment will be successful!

 

i thought that the counterbalancer was a needed part to keep vibration down.

 

I just just ripped out my clutch and basket, i lost 3lb... no counterbalancer?? that sounds a bit scary..

 

Did the BMW F650 rotax have the same counterbalancer???? most engines in bike configurations dont have counterbalancers, but I am not for sure about the F650.

I would think if you could minimize the wieght on the crank and and rodd, it would still vibrate, but maybe not enough to damage bearing and such.


Its a good idea, even if it doesn't work out, we still need shops trying to extract power out of the same engine through many different ways.






Bigger.

 

well that would make for a faster reving engine but how would it effect the trail riding, wouldn't it turn into a banshee kind of ride?

 

I know a guy at work that shed 5 pounds of internal mass in stall #5. He really picked up some performance after that.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

LOL!! You know I never thought of it that way when I posted this. Very Funny!![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

Back to the original question of how the engine would sound... I know when I replaced the crank pulley on my car with a new, aftermarket harmonic balancer, the sound difference in the engine was quite noticeable. Removing that weight from a small single cylinder engine would have a huge effect on the way it sounds.

 

1} What would be the plan to drive the water pump? Right now, it drives off the ballance shaft. An electric could be used in it's place, but it's one more issue to address.

2} Talk about a vibating beast!!! 650CC's of non counterballanced, single cylinder, 4-stroke mass??? It would shake the motor to pieces, if it ran. The harmonics would tear the thing to pieces. Bearings wouldn't last a week. Cases would be broken inside of a month. Your hands would be numb inside of 5 minutes of holding the bars.

For an all out, rebuild after every race, 30 second ride at a time, no compromise motor, it could work. For the rest of the world, that would have to be the least intelligent power gain that I've heard of to this date. If you want to experiment with losing rotating mass in the bottom end, experiment with how much you can shave off of everything. To try to eliminate the counter ballancer is actually laughable!

I have to learn to keep my mouth shut, it actually would have been funny to hear about. Somehow, I don't think we will hear about the failures though.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

Well Don, supposedly the crank and rod don't come balanced from the factory hence the use of the counterbalancer. From what I understand you can balance the crank, rod and piston enough to eliminate the counterbalancer. Or so I am being told.