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Big problem with ATI balancers is they degrade over time. They are a true "race part" that gets replaced when they expire.
Race parts only parts don't belong on a street car... One simple reason is when they sell that car, whomever buys it won't know about the balancer and if it falls apart then you have one hell of a problem. Happened on a buddy that bought a Z28 that was "built". 6 months later the long-expired balancer fell apart and trashed a whole ton of stuff.
Plus a new balancer is only needed if they changed the harmonics of the engine... Nothing they did would have done that... Only boring/stroking does that enough to warrant a better balancer. I can gurantee that a better balancer doesn't add anything and won't help anything on a stock bore/stroke motor. Now, if they went with neutral balanced balancer shafts and a "fixed" bottom end that was rebalanced, then an aftermarket dampner is most certainly warranted. But his build never mentioned that stuff, so you can assume he has stock crank and balance shafts, thus nothing more than a stock balancer is needed.
Sorry, too much snake-oil is tossed around on high performance stuff and only once you start maxing power out does it come into play. Especially the throttle-body "mod". What a joke, as a larger throttlebody ONLY comes into play once the throttlebody becomes a restriction and on a forced induction engine, it most certainly is not!
Again, people talk about "feel" and all the placebo stuff, when you can retune the ecu to give you the same "feel" with a totally stock throttlebody considering it is a computer controlled unit with no cable actuator.
Even teh whole "cold air kits" that are sold... Stock it is a "cold air" setup. All you have to do is do the math on how much of a restriction the stock snorkel system is. Most people don't realize that the stock setup is fine up over 400hp, probably close to 450hp.
The ONLY reason for a cold-air kit is for more turbo whine. PERIOD!
Again, when I tlak about power and supporting mods I am talking about actual power, not perceived stuff. I am talking about stuff that makes sense once you calculate it out.
And, no, I am not overstating how complex the tuning setups are. Anyone that wants to minimize it doesn't know what they are talking about. There are literally DOZENS of tables that need to be modified if you go with a bigger turbo. If you aren't making all those changes, it is a "hack". If you go with different cams, just about EVERY table in the engine management needs to be modified that deals with temps, fueling, torque, spark, etc, etc, with a healthy number of other tables dealing with torque and transmission settings. Again, if not then it is a "hack".
Oh, and I have RARELY seen a Gen 5 engine tune that isn't a hacked in place tune. Once again, VERY few actually spend the time and money to get EVERYTHING right, and in a tune if everything is not 100% done properly, it is not right.
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