Yea I think I would want to know exactly what the 3500 come out of. I don't know if I would go out to buy one just to have a spare. We had '80 hi reving N6 engine in salvage machine ready to go for quite some time before someone needed it. As HP went up on these machines they went to counterbalanced cranks, fluid vibration dampers, stronger iron main caps, 3 ring pistons, idems that others have mentioned hear, ect. ect. I had an Allis 8030 with 130 PTO HP that a guy wanted set at 160 PTO HP. He mainly needed power for PTO work and very little would be used for ground drive (like right, I told him not to come to me in a year or two and brag about how many bottom plow he is pulling with no problem). Any way the belts and rubber vibration damper started talking to me when lugging that engine set at 160 PTO HP. I set it back down a bit and told him if it ain't enough than crank it up yourself. As far as cylinder varible drive I would rather stay with simplicity of what we have. Rarely ever have belt problem anymore after getting headers, feeders and cylinders to work properly. Yes we have a little snow now but hardly enough to take snow machine out.