Balancer slides in on install

I will come back and say that I also cannot remember if those Poncho engines I worked on had stock balancers or not. Knowing who I did the work for, probably not. This has been over thirty years ago. I do agree with our friend down under that the stock Pontiac balancers are most if not all a slip fit. That does stand out in my mind so I imagine the ones I had experience with had some type of performance balancer.

All that said, think of it this way. If you want to silence a bell, do you very lightly put your hand on it, or do you grip the bell pretty firmly? Same principle. In order to absorb vibration "better" something needs to be a tight fit.