More about vibration dampers. A vibration damper is just that, a device designed to dampen harmonic vibrations. For example with a car engine, there can sometimes be certain rpms, load conditions, etc. where one can encounter a harmonic vibration in the engine. If this is encountered at an rpm that the engine spends a lot of time, like say at a common cruising speed, it can eventually cause damage to the engine. So a vibration damper is used to prevent this problem. It is usually a steel hub, with an outer ring bonded on with a cushion of rubber, but that is not the only way to do it.

This problem is also occasionally encountered in full size aircraft engines. In testing, they sometimes find that certain prop, engine, and airframe combinations can cause a harmonic vibration. In this case the owners manual and the airplane are placarded against continuous operation in the rpm range where the vibration can occur, because airplanes don't use harmonic balancers, they use props!

Now, back to our little engines. The magneto is not a vibration damper. It is a magneto, to generate a spark, and a flywheel, which provides a rotating mass and smooths the engine out somewhat, and a fan, to cool the engine in it's original installation. We don't need it to generate spark, and we have the propeller for flywheel effect and cooling, so we don't need the magneto flywheel.

AV8TOR