Removing balance shafts on B204FT

Do I need to pull the engine out of the bay in order to remove the balance shafts?
If someone of you europeans with that engine have some experience, how you did it?
Is it too hard for doing that alone in the weekend? What about the holes on the block?
Is it only matter of threading and bolting the holes or some special caps are needed?

Depending on what your goal is, you might get most of the (dubious?) benefit by just cutting that belt drive that doesn't do anything other than spin them. I guess they add a miniscule amount of rotating mass and friction, plus another belt that can break and take out the timing belt. If you want to reduce the weight though, then you need to block off those oil ports.

if you just don't want the parasitic loss, take the belt off.

We (my brother and I) removed the balance shafts of his B204FT this summer. It is pretty easy. I am not sure if the channels can be tapped easily when the engine is in the car. You need to remove the accessories on the intake side and possibly even the intake manifold. A good time to replace gaskets, clean intake, check injectors, vacuum lines, engine wiring+grounds etc

removing the balance shafts is the easy part after you have dug deep enough to reach them. 4 bolts for each one and they are off.

Before:
exhaust side:


Intake side:




We plugged the oil drains with freeze plugs of 16 mm (cup style), together with a dab of blue sealant. Both intake side and exhaust side are the same size drain.


The cup-style mini freeze plugs.



We had trouble sourcing the small freeze plugs here, PM me, i might be able to get a few extra.


The oil feed on the intake side is 10 mm exactly. So we tapped it for M12x1.75 (normal thread) (M12 normally needs 12mm-1.75mm=1.2mm but 10 mm worked too). Use lots of grease when cutting and often back out and remove the grease+shavings (with magnet, screwdriver, brush etc). We used a high quality bolt and a small copper washer under it, again a dab of blue sealant was used to prevent the slightest leaks.




Bolt with copper washer under it. Make sure the bolt has a nice flat sealing face under the head to seal well on the copper washer.

The exhaust side was plugged with a M6x1 grub screw. Tapped again with lots of grease and not all the way through so the grub screw would have something to seat against (the feed channel enters a bigger oil gallery there). This hole is angeled 45 degrees upward so the shavings can fall back down and get binded with the grease.




You can seen the little black end of the small screw in the port. In-hex/inbus head.

To finish it off we painted the mounting faces redblock red again. No rust!

See this thread for more info on the swap and some more info on the removing of the balance shafts.

Thanks guys for quick answer. And for the images which are priceless!
I will see, but I hope this mod will take place in the first half of the january '09.
I just don't want to wait for spring/summer. Lack of free time and good place to work stops me from doing this just right now - my garage is just too small, dark and without any heating.
And I need my car everyday now.. But a friend of mine have a good garage and I hope if I gather all stuff I need, in one or max two days the shafts will be off..

I might want to do this then to my B204FT

lol bump a thread from 2008 to say you might want to do this??

2fast242gt said:

lol bump a thread from 2008 to say you might want to do this??

Click to expand...

Yep its now recent for me as i just bought a 960 that has this engine and i got told to remove this for my use. Bumping this might create new interest and insight