Скачать или смотреть Mitsubishi Outlander 4N14 Balance Shaft input – intermediate gear

Removed the cube coupler between drive shaft and Balance Unit. Removed (but then replaced) the drive shaft, to allow for further inspection.
Wear found on the input shaft of the Balance Unit,
Wear on both interfaces of the cube coupler,
Wear found on the output end of the drive shaft (interface to cube coupler),
No wear on the gear teeth of the drive shaft (mating with the intermediate shaft),
Small mounts of debris in the mesh of the oil suction pipe: mostly metallic 'shavings' matched to the wear on the coupler. Some non-metallic.
The sump was very clean - no sludge, no debris.
A lot of play on the intermediate gear - as you can see in the video. At this point, I had no choice but to replace the the drive shaft, as doing so helps stabilise the intermediate gear. Omitted the cube coupler but everything else put back.
At cold idle, engine immediately quiet by comparison to before.
When the oil is at working temperature, slight rattle at idle (assumed to be the intermediate gear), but only a fraction of the noisy 'bag of spanners' before.
When driving, there is a perception of a fine vibration that was not there before but you quickly become unaware of it -but that is to be expected if a damping feature no longer functions.
Next steps will be more extreme: I plan to remove the intermediate gear, before it fails completely and causes wider damage: remove timing cover, remove the balance drive shaft housing (that also houses the intermediate gear), then reinstall the housing, minus the intermediate gear and balance drive shaft (or maybe no need to re-fit the housing?)
Unanswered questions:
Assuming that the timing chain is ok, I intend to leave it as is, thereby avoiding disassembly of the injectors, valve cover, etc. So 'just' remove belts, crankshaft pulley & timing cover (I might need to slacken off the valve cover, enough to break the seal with the top face of the timing cover).
If I were to only remove the balance drive shaft (which does not require the big effort of removing the timing cover, then I would have to blank off the oil supply to its shaft (in order to protect the lubrication of the intermediate gear). However, if I also remove the intermediate gear, there should be no need to fit the blanking plug. Equally, I could also leave the Balance Unit (disconnected) on the bottom of the block, so I would not need to fit the grub screw in the oil feed to the Balance Unit.