when people get their engine balanced, what's done to the engine to do it?

Can you tell if your engine is unbalanced by driving?

When your engine starts lugging at low rpms, is that because the flywheel or something in the engine isn't quite balanced?

 

Balancing is done by making sure that the crankshaft is weighted properly (just like wheels are balanced) and all the piston/rod combos weigh the exact same amount.

 

so how do people make adjustments if something isn't balanced? replace the part?

 

I think they machine a little bit of material off of non-structural areas of parts.
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Jeff

 

is there any way to tell if your engine is balanced or not by driving it?

 

I imagine your car would shake if it was out of balance enough. You might get accelerated bearing wear which could be detected with oil analysis. The knock sensor might pick up what it thinks is knock and pull timing.

If you have a bad vibration and haven't recently installed any performance parts then you might have a blown engine mount. Apparently, our mounts are liquid filled and they can leak. You'll get a lot more vibes after that.
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Jeff

 

I'm not able to drive my car at 10-15 mph in 2nd gear without the car violently lugging back and forth to death. It goes away obviously if I give it more gas - but sometimes like a parking garage, you just can't give it more gas, so have no choice but to drive in 1st gear

It started happening immediatly after I put all my major mods on...

 

Can you list specificially the group of mods you installed right before the problem started? I imagine that a lot of your mods could cause this sort of problem. Most likely will need an experience mechanic's help.
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Jeff

 

When your RPM's are below 2500 RPM in any gear and you give it a little throttle the car is very jerky with the tilton set up... you will also hear loud chatter... all the sound goes away above 2500-2750 RPM...

so basicly... keep the car above 2700 RPM while in gear and you wont hear the sound / jerkey ness...

 

yeah, i know all that. I've had a lot of instances where I don't want to be above 2500rpm - like if I'm in an enclosed parking lot and there's some people walking right there, my car is loud and driving in an enclosed place in 1st gear is pretty loud, so I'll put it in 2nd and the engine will just lug and jerk almost uncontrollably - and i'll be doing this at like 1500rpm. It's just situations like that where I can't go driving aggressivly and trying not to draw undue attention to myself with being loud that it becomes the most annoying thing to try to drive.

Out on the normal streets, it's great though.

I'm just wondering what's up with my engine because it's misfiring - not just my car, but lots of Z owners. What's causing it? Is the engine set up to misfire from the factory? Is the ECU overly sensitive to it? maybe it's the crank and cam sensor wires - I'll put those in as soon as I get them. Maybe getting the HKS ignition amplifier will help smooth that out, maybe raising the idle will help it, maybe getting my A/F even better will help, maybe getting rid of the UR pulley will help, maybe the tilton is partly contributing to it, maybe upgrading the fuel system might help, maybe my engine just sucks, maybe my pistons aren't quite sealing all the way - i had a really bad miss-shift once and my engine was detonating a lot at WOT at one point because of a bad A/F ratio, and who knows what the original owner did to it who had the car for 1460 miles. Maybe it's the TS flash. Obviously all my mods amplified or created the problem. Changing spark plugs 1 step colder did not help.

I had the majority of my power mods put on all at once - so yeah, it's going to be difficult to troubleshoot.

 

An engine balance issue would be felt by the knock sensor long before the driver would ever sense it.Loss of power and possibly a high rpm imbalance(knock retard would kick in).If it were so extreme as to cause the car to shutter,likely the motor is coming apart...which yours is/has not

Motor is disassembled and weights are placed on each journal to duplicate rotating mass and the crank spun.Weight is added or removed from the counter weights builton the crank..very sensitive/precise work and V6 much more difficult thn V8

This not your problem

 

exactly ^^^

 

This sound 100% like your clutch and flywheel. The Tilton is known for chatter and engagement issues....comes with the territory with this clutch. Your engine is fine. Balancing only needs to be done if the motor is torn down and parts are replaced.