You can clearly see where Blake's connecting rod clobbered the balancer weight.

I think we can all appreciate the seriousness of these failures.  Try and picture your butt planted on your Savage, doin a sweet 70 mph on the interstate, and this balancer baloney decides to rear its ugly head.

The front of your engine blows out along with a whoppin gusher of oil.  You run over the razor-sharp parts and at the same time slather up the rear skin with a generous helping of Rotella.  I'm havin nightmares already.

So, I plead with you to tell us more.  I know your current focus is on that sweet new motor, but please try and figure out exactly what happened to your old motor before you do the engine swap.  It will be a great project, interesting, fun, and gratifying.

You will have to get that balance shaft out of the way before you can pull the mill out of the frame.  Grab ahold of that thing, yank it out of there, and break out your phone.  Take some pics.  See if you can see the drive pin.  Can you tell if the drive pin is in place or is it adrift?

Try to rotate the drive gear with your fingers or a screwdriver or something.  Can the gear turn independent of the crank shaft?

Your left-hand balance shaft bearing looks fine.  How about the right-hand bearing?  Is it OK too?

Check the drive key on the driven gear.  Is it sheared off?

Ya gotta remove the exhaust system to get the engine out of the frame.  That's half-way to gettin the clutch-cover off.  Take off the clutch-cover.

How does the primary drive gear nut look?  Are the corners folded over, like it was over-torqued?
 
See if you can remove the primary drive gear and cam drive sprocket.  Is that cam drive sprocket fractured?  

Your balance shaft driven gear (the one with the springs) looks like it might be broken in half.  Is the balance shaft drive gear broken too?

I guess it's conceivable that these failures might be somehow related to the cushion springs in the driven gear.  If those springs fail to keep the gear and weight phased within acceptable limits the rod and weight might collide.  Are all the springs accounted for?  Any broken springs?

I thank you again.  Sharing this info could save someone's hide.  I think we need to figure out what makes this failure tick, come up with a periodic inspection, possibly a way to prevent it from happening.  Maybe a way to capture the pin.

Best regards, Mike

I can't move anything by hand, I will be keeping in touch with my progression but I can tell that it is going to be long. I basically don't know anything about engines. It also is my first bike, so I haven't been in touch with motorcycles before now. It is going to be my winter project and I am reading carefully what you guys are writting.

I honestly don't really know where to start. I am at the point where I emptied to fuel tank and now I am looking for a way to stabilise the bike. probably will put a bloc of wood underneath the frame.

Thanks a lot for the help. I will be filming everything that I will be doing when I will start to take the bike apart to access the engine.

$70 at Harbor Freight.  Get a couple of tie downs to keep it stable while you wrench on it.  

ohiomoto wrote on 12/05/21 at 18:18:36:


I've done it that way, leave the wheels on, remove the belt and all the mounting brackets.
Tip it over with a piece of carpet under the engine, remove the last couple of bolts connecting the engine to the frame, wiggle it free and lift the bike off the engine.

You can install it the same way in reverse.

But I've since gotten a chain hoist and find that much easier.  and you can lift the whole bike with it.  very handy for getting that wire in the right location under the bike.

As long as we are showing off bike stands...I made this from 3/4 plywood and 2x2 for the platform, and 6x6 for the legs. It sits about 16" off the ground and I use a ramp (for getting bikes in/out of my p/u) to get bikes on and off. It measures 24" x 72". I had all of the pieces on hand, I only needed to buy the wheel fork from HF ($15) and 4 tie-down rings.

almost there