Originally Posted by Walkenvol

My understanding is that some small percentage of the OM617's have a flywheel that is balanced with the crank as opposed to being neutrally balanced as is the norm on American vehicles. The idea behind marking the location of the MB flywheel on the MB crank is that you would take the MB flywheel to the machinist and have them check to determine its balancing. If it is neutrally balanced then your good to go with the Jeep flywheel. If not, then the Jeep flywheel has to be balanced to match the MB flywheel balancing.

I can't recall reading about anyone who has had to rebalance the Jeep flywheel yet and I think most folks are playing the odds and skipping this step. My thought is that if the MB flywheel is truely part of the engine balancing, then why did MB not design the flywheel so it could only be bolted on one way?