^ I speculate that it was, at least in large part, more necessary with the bigger displacement motors. And those Porsche fours were huge (the 924, that was a VW motor, not sure on that one).
I had a 2G piston/1G rod motor sans balance shafts in 1951. That engine went through the ringer and never let me down. The rebuild was approaching 50k hard miles by the time i sold it, still felt smooth as a swiss watch at high RPM. Machine work, assembly, lack of tolerance stack all come into play a great deal too.
Oh, almost forgot, I used Ingalls tie rod parts
click and
click, they were fine.
OK, last edit. OP, good luck here. As others have said, the car appears to be in good hands. That turbo Duc is sick. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif