What balancers are recommended for a stock 2009 LS3, not raced or tracked, just street driven? My tech says the Powerbond ones look just like the OEM ones and ATI is probably overkill for a street driven car with no mods....Thanks in advance

 

ATI makes high quality replacements for stock. So does PowerBond.

 

Summit C2501

 

thank you

 

I'm a firm believer in overkill.

 

Both brands are good....Powerbond is less expensive than ATI & fine for street driving. Whatever, stay away from another GM OEM unit.

 

Are you going to pin it, assuming it's not already pinned? It only took me an additional 30 mins and provides 1.34 boat loads of piece of mind (some say it provides 1.41 boat loads, but I think that's rather exaggerated). Also, I watched an inventive way to do it on youtube that didn't require removing any steering lines or the rack & pinion. It saved 7.23 boat loads of time BTW. Basically doing it his way lowers the balancer below all the interferences by dropping the whole engine cradle aboput 4-5 inches. Some on here may disagree with the method but I've done it on my 2007 and it worked perfectly.

Just my nickel's worth! Nickel you say? Soon pennies will be completely phased out so I'm gettin used to not being able to offer my two-cents worth!

 

When it costs a grand in labor to R & R an HB, I only want to do it ONCE.

ATI

 

Thanks for the reply.....ATI website says it has to be removed and sent in for rebuild every few years....not sure why if they are supposedly so good

 

In theory, most aftermarket balancers should be rebuilt after a certain amount of mileage\wear. Not that they all can be. Just the way they are built. ATI is a great balancer. They are a multi-piece balancer that is a moving\rotating part. There are 2 Powerbond balancers for the LS - pb1117n and pb1117ss. From what I remember, the "b" is OEM equivalent and the "ss" is a step or two above OEM. I replaced mine with the pb1117ss about 10 years ago and no issues.

 

Thank you very much......so no rebuilding on the Powerbond?

 

That is odd but good in one sense. Pinning the balancer to the crankshaft doesn't make removing it any different than removing non-pinned balancers. However, if instead of removing the balancer to send back to ATI for refurbishing, you installed another new balancer, you'd have to redrill for the new balancer's inner hub. After ATI refurbishes the one you've already pinned to the crank, you don't have to any additional work, just slide it back on, install the pin, bolt & washer and torque to 718,412 ft lbs. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little on the torque. I bought the ARP bolt kit. Comes with a bad-*** parallel ground washer, a new NON-torque-to-yield bolt and a packet of thread lube and step-by-step detailed instructions. I believe the ARP version torqued to 235 ft lbs.

Here is what a pinned balancer looks like. I didn't know what it was until I planned a prioject to install a supercharger. I was told I pretty much had to pin the crank's main pulley/balancer because with the additional belt load incurred by the supercharger it would likely spin the existing taper-fit lock loose and destroy both the crankshaft and balancer. I did not install the supercharger but my balancer broke the taper lock loose just in normal use (I read that is a fairly common failure on the LS2 and LS3 engines) so I pinned it when installing the new balancer. It allows the Vette owner to say "I will never spin another balancer again on this car!".

Why didn't I install the supercharger you ask? I diverted those funds to install a supercharger on my 2020 Jeep Gladiator Sport-S. That upgrade offered me he opportunity to buy rear tires more frequently. It seems that even with the limited-slip rear diff the SC upgrade on the Gladiator will spin both those 35" rears with nnnnooooo problem.


Pinned Balancer