My Kershaw 10-10 forestry mulcher went down yesterday after the rear axle had several bearings go out due to low oil . It is a Ford 5000 rear end with a hydraulic motor driving it though a spur gear reduction plate. I have to replace the pinion bearings, and two sperical roller bearings on the motor shaft on either side of the drive gear. They (motor shaft and bearings) slip into a heavy adapter and support plate bolted onto the front of the housing. As these type bearings are a bit more pricey than ball bearings, if I can match ID/OD and width dimensions, can a ball bearing take its place or is there a reason I'm not seeing for using the sperical (alignment)? Its an early 80's machine so I'm not concerned about doing some mods if they would be an acceptable alternative.
Just be sure & check endplay after replacing them.. In a Simms injection pump, they went from ball bearings to tapered roller bearings on the cam shaft & the end play is way off.. & needs to be reset EVERY TIME.. you replace/update the bearings.. I would "assume" that'll be the case in your situation too..??
Yair . . . Dunno wrwtexan I reckon you are right about the alignment issue. Also as thepumpguysc mentions . . . thrust. The main application for sphericals I can remember is the the outboard final drive bearing on certain crawlers . . . I know Allis Chalmers used them and I'm unsure now on Cat. I always assumed the spherical was there to allow a bit of tolerance for wear in the diagonal brace bushings. There were two types as I remember. In one, the individual roller elements were concave like a dumb-bell. In the other type they were shaped like little barrels, the barrel type seemed best. I would imagine a spherical of a given size would be much better at handling slight misalignment, radial and thrust loads than (say) an equivalent double ball race. Of course what I speak of is a very low speed application. Here again I am talking way out of my knowledge zone and I'm sure some more qualified folks will chip in with some more definitive suggestions. All the best with the fix. Cheers.
For what I have been told spherical roller bearing can take more vibration, more misalignment etc. Your mulcher rotor will have spherical bearings.Sometimes using the best is the cheapest.
May have to resize them ?? but the first is the end plate and reduction set and the second is the motor shaft, gear and inner races. I also have no idea how to get everything off the shaft. There is no snap ring or anything I can see holding it all together???
A moderator or someone might post how to resize pics on here as one of mine was recently. I would post more but they come up as these tiny images...
When you uploaded the pictures did you chose full size image or thumbnails ?
Most likely a press fit to the shaft as far as changing them it would have to be thousands cheaper and or unobtainable to even consider reengineering
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Shoot, with pictures like that I bet we can see it better than you can in person.... I find that taking pictures of machines with my phone I often can see things zoomed in on the computer screen better than my eyes in person...unfortunately whatever I want to look at is usually just outside the frame....
typically sphericals are used because: A) the structure is prone to warping, bending, flexing, or expansion due to heat. or B) The manufacturer could not be bothered to build a solid structure and line bore everything so the shafts were in a straight line. Typically both. My guess is ball bearings with no allowance for misalignment will be damn short lived, YMMV
To all, thanks and I'll be going back with original. Regarding the pic uploads, I'll upload some others and see what I'm doing.