Originally Posted by martinh

Re losing the silicon ramp, This has been proven that it makes little to no noticable diff in performance. This question has been raised a number of times and several have reported no noticable diff when run with ramp missing. Re affecting balance its to close to the centre of the crank and silicon is much lighter than the steel that it replaces in an all steel shaft. The whole idea of useing silicon in this area is to get a better balance on the shaft hence replacing steel with silicon. The only slight diff with no silicon is slightly diff gas flow in this area. Cranks never had silicon ramps before and were not shaped in the inlet whether done in silicon or machined in the steel (they had square bottomed holes also under cut past the valve port in the passage).As has been said many times its easy to replace silicon ramp if you want to. Regards Martin.