Brian:
Just a bit of history....the conventional wisdom on this site - which I do not subscribe to - is to remove balance gears from any Kohler that came equipped with same. As a side note, at some point in the past discussions about this, it was stated that there were documents from Kohler that backed up this action. I have a long standing challenge to supply a copy of said document(s) - so far not met.
My minority opinion on balance gears involves a couple of points:
1: It's not really the gears that are the problem, but the bearings and shafts, which are subject to the quality of maintenance that was provided for the engine.
2: While we are 4000 some strong on this forum, there were millions of that 'ol Kohler design built, most still running WITH balance gears. As a matter of fact, I suspect that it's probably less than a 100 or so members of this forum that
have removed the balance gears, many based on information read here, not as a result of their own actual measurement of the critical wear points. BTW - I do NOT argue the fact that bad bearings in the balance gears can cause catastrophic failure. I do believe that in most cases this failure can be traced to the quality of maintenance....
I've heard honest positions presented here by qualified Kohler mechanics that positively stated to remove the balance gears from any engine being rebuilt...at the opposite end of this are the several like qualified Kohler mechanics who looked at me as though I'd just arrived from the moon when I suggested omitting the gears during a rebuild - although they all backed checking and replacing worn shafts and bearings. The basic opinion was -"that's the way Kohler built it, we give then back to the customer the same way"
So Brian, that's the minority opinion.......
Dennis:
Hydro best, 1x8-1x9 series best looking, balance gears not all bad, hytran good, Shell Rotella good, green paint sucks (except on old 110's)...... How's that for a one sentence barn burner??? Oh - BTW - same place as last year...