MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

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Hey, guys... I am a KTM/Husaberg tech here in Las Vegas and I also build National Hare and Hound motors for a factory KTM racer. I have seen this problem many times and talked to the race team motor builders when setting up my race engines. They recommended a bearing spec'ed for the supermoto 560 motor that was rated about 4000 rpm higher. It was a ball bearing so that meant more difficulty in splitting cases and setting side clearance and whatnot, but for me, knowing that the bearing wasn't going to fail was more important. The last thing I wanted was for a bearing to cause my rider to DNF.
My suggestion to anyone rebuilding a Husaberg/KTM motor that wants to prevent bearing failure is to go with the ball bearing. The motor guy wont like it...(believe me, I know!) but you will get proper life out of the rebuild and I believe a little extra set up time to be worth it.
By the way, for the national bikes we run Motul 300v and I have seen bearing failure in less than 10 hours (with oem bearings) we have 35 hours of top level national pro time on the ball bearing motor and so far no probs. For my personal fleet, I run Shell Rotella and have had no problems as of yet.
My bikes include 6 Husabergs and 7 KTM's.
ENDOG
 
Endog thanks for the info ,I am lucky to live close to one of highest regarded engine builders in South Africa when it comes to bikes especially singles and he does the same thing ,goes to ball bearings for all the race KTM's and Husabergs
 
enddog

the bearing you are on about is a C4 or if it isn't that it's a special 9-ball race that's a C4. the standard hold 8 balls. it's in the doc somewhere!

i hold two .......!!

regards

Taffy
 
ORANGEBERG said:
If you hear your engine becoming noisy or get metal on the drainplug magnet dont operate it or you will damage your cylinder and piston.
Click to expand...

Hmm ok Im nervous now... cos my drain plug magnet always has metal on it?..even from new.. but haven't noticed any strange noises from the motor... yet 8O

Should i be afraid?
 
RE: Re: MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

I think the give away is that you will have bits of shinny particles which are bits of bearing attached to your strainer which in my opinion indicate that you have a bearing issue ,I have photos of this but cant post them on hear as they are too big. Your magnet will always have this black power like substance stuck to it that which I assume is from normal running , I stand to be corrected on all of this perhaps Taffy can come in hear and confirm ?
By the way well played yesterday
 
RE: Re: MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

I would be keeping a very close eye on it for sure.
 
kiwiberger said:
ORANGEBERG said:
If you hear your engine becoming noisy or get metal on the drainplug magnet dont operate it or you will damage your cylinder and piston.
Click to expand...

Hmm ok Im nervous now... cos my drain plug magnet always has metal on it?..even from new.. but haven't noticed any strange noises from the motor... yet 8O

Should i be afraid?
Click to expand...

yes you should be afraid , how many hours are on your bike ? . i would have the motor inspected for any signs of trouble .

the cost of an internal inspection is cheap compared to the cost of a major meltdown .
 
Re: RE: Re: MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

madmark said:
I think the give away is that you will have bits of shinny particles which are bits of bearing attached to your strainer which in my opinion indicate that you have a bearing issue ,I have photos of this but cant post them on hear as they are too big. Your magnet will always have this black power like substance stuck to it that which I assume is from normal running , I stand to be corrected on all of this perhaps Taffy can come in hear and confirm ?
By the way well played yesterday
Click to expand...

Ok Thanks Mark, have never noticed any shiny particles ..yet.. its always been the black stuff I seen so far.

Yup the AB's pulled it out of the bag at the last minute, and the yachties did it last night as well.. things are starting to look up in that department now :)

My '05 HFE450E has a little over 60 hours on it, have religiously changed the oil every 10 hours, and run Shell Advance VSX 4 15w - 50 fully synthetic oil, which from reading the posts seems possibly not a good choice?
 
RE: Re: RE: Re: MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

All the major oil companies make a decent oil so I wouldn’t read to much into what brand but just the fact that you do change it. The oil you are using is top notch stuff in any case.
 
RE: Re: RE: Re: MAIN BEARINGS FAILURE, MUST CHANGE

i get absolutely nothing on my tampon filter now. used to be different when new but all is AOK. i know that when new the camchain was taking lumps out of the head but when that stopped it pretty much all stopped.

regards

Taffy
 
Hi.
We have had several breakdowns on the main bearings during developing of the 670cc kit. The problem we have is mainly with the left side bearing on the 644cc crank, the flange on the inner ring is cracked and destroys the rollers. On the rightside on 628cc crank (2005-) the bearing have a support for the inner ring flange, but on the 644cc we have made a washer to fit so the flange rests completly on the crank side, this solved the right side problems.
Left side: we use SKF NJ2206ECP/C3 and no balancer but we get to much gyro force and the riders dont like that.
The problem is the same , the bearing inner ring flange has no support to the balancer bearing inner ring, they are diffr diameter.
We have made a 3mm washer to fit between balancer bearing and mainbearing inner ring, with the same diameter as the innerring flange, this makes the inner ring much stronger when the crank has to take flex and axial force.
Then you all think, how do they fit 3mm washer in a 0.8mm axialfreeplay??
Alt 1:We mill out 3mm on the leftside crankcase, then it fits but we dont like to move the bearing 3mm to the left due to the flex increases, so we went for alt2.
Alt 2: We use the old 2001 single bearing balancer and the drive shaft for it, balancer bearing is 9mm, then our new 3mm washer fits perfect. We remove weight on the balancer so its lighter than the 450cc 2007 balancer so the bearing can take the force of the weight.
We have had no bearing breakdown after this, we run this modification on all our small 644 cranks as well on the big 670cc, this is suiteble for 628cc cranks on left side, right side 2005- not needed.
We have +23 RWHP on our 670cc so its alot of force on our bearings.
We run SKF NJ206ECP/C3.
Good luck
/Thomas
 
Enginehardware said:
The problem is the same , the bearing inner ring flange has no support to the balancer bearing inner ring, they are diffr diameter.
We have made a 3mm washer to fit between balancer bearing and mainbearing inner ring, with the same diameter as the innerring flange, this makes the inner ring much stronger when the crank has to take flex and axial force.
Good luck
/Thomas
Click to expand...

Thankyou Thomas.

Thats the 2nd time that point has been raised on this site.

Does the new style bearing in the latest balancers have a bigger inner ring I.D. compared to the old style- looking at pictures only it appears not ?? (Dr Cs gallery)
 
AUSBERG said:
Enginehardware said:
The problem is the same , the bearing inner ring flange has no support to the balancer bearing inner ring, they are diffr diameter.
We have made a 3mm washer to fit between balancer bearing and mainbearing inner ring, with the same diameter as the innerring flange, this makes the inner ring much stronger when the crank has to take flex and axial force.
Good luck
/Thomas
Click to expand...

Thankyou Thomas.

Thats the 2nd time that point has been raised on this site.

Does the new style bearing in the latest balancers have a bigger inner ring I.D. compared to the old style- looking at pictures only it appears not ?? (Dr Cs gallery)
Click to expand...

The new style bearing on the balancer have the same inner diameter as the old bearing, and its not removeble, we tried just to change bearing, not possible.
Its a lockring in the middle of the balancer, a grove in the bearing.
That type of constr with 9mm bearing and a spacerring that re-inforces the mainbearing would be great.
Maybee this will be the solution on the new engine for 2009.
//Thomas
 
it appears to me the only reason for the for the main bearing inner shoulder to crack away ,as thomas describes,is because of too much end float in the crank.the crank has to be acting like a battering ram,simply because it is allowed too much room to move.i can image expansion 2-4 thou (.1mm) might be possible,but to my way of thinking, giving it in excess of .4mm ,then you are more likely to have problems with the bearing inners shoulder getting damaged.i will be setting mine to .2mm as dale lineaweaver recommends.
if i have any problems down the track i will certainly let you all know.
..weed..
 
G´day Weed! I like your gallery! Always nice to get some info on the guy behind the nick.
Consider this just another input. The Husaberg racing dep. recommended 0,6-0,8 mm axial play with roller type main bearings. I have run 0,6 up to 1,0 mm for quite some time now. I have had 2 incidents in the balancer/main bearing area. The first was due to no axial play, and the second due to residues in the balancer bearing after the first incident (can I excuse that with stressed out field work in between practice and race?) Once the damage is done, it is difficult to determine whether it was the balancer bearing that went first, threw out debris and cracked the inner ring of the main bearing, or it was the inner ring that split first and started the evil process... As the crank is bending a lot, roller type bearings need more space than ball bearings do. I have machined all my crank casings to deepen the main bearing seats to allow at least 0,6 mm. I wouldn't recommend you to fit roller type main bearings with anything less than 0,5 mm free play. In theory, there should be no forces "banging" the crank from side to side, but the crank will bend, even in theory. :wink:
 
Hello. I have had a main bearing breakdown last week :( and it was the flange on the inner ring that broke off. Maybe it was to little axial-play?! i didn't have any good dial indicator-stand at home, while doing the rebuild, and i had to improvise to do the measurement with a caliper, now I'm strongly regret that i didn't wait to get the right stuff.Im posted some picture off the things in my gallery.

I did the rebuild with the late single two-row c/b, and I'm sure that the flange started to go first. Have posted some picture in my gallery off the mess. Now i need new mains, C/B, cylinder liner, piston, and will have the crank open-up just to make sure its no deposits off metal in the big-end bearing, if feels okay no play (will shift the needle-bearing to)

The piston and liner had gone 110 hr, and i probably cod have run it for a Little more if i had put a new ring and hand-grinded the pistonskirt a little. it may have smoked a little :roll: I Had plans to rebuild the engine in the winter but something didnt want that.

I was just thinking if this is the normal-breakage off the roller-mainbearing that the flange snapoff. than it doesn't make a different if you find upgraded bearings (13 rollers ) and so . Because the force that is braking things are in the axial not radial as those upgraded bearings is stronger in, the flange on the inner-ring is the same on all as i think.
I agree with Thomas, with his modification that it seems reasonable. but the thing is, I think there is a reason why Husaberg have done modification on the c/b double bearing and now last single-double-row, I don't now if they have lightened the c/b counterweight to give less gyroscopic effect and load on the bearing, Thomas mentored that they had lightened the c/b on they modified single row, and maybe this helped the life off the single row c/b?? But otherwise i don't want the old single c/b in my engine, If so i want to know that this c/b outperform the time on the main by two at least, so i don't need to worry about the c/b should fail if i have modified the mains to last.

Secondly i think that radius that are between the flange and the roller-surface on the inner-ring (it is a little grounded down, That this maybe is some kind off point were they start to snap, i don't know if all NJ 206 have this on the inner ring ?? I'm aware that you have to had some radius to clear for the radius on the roller, but i think if they were some innerring that have this radius that flow nice from the flange to the outer surface that this could help make this part stronger.

It would have been nice if we at Husaberg.org could come up with a fix that work on this problem. I know that it has been written much off this problem but they are many different approach to solve it, and non seams to address the problem completely.
I personally think that roller bearing is the thing to prefer in front off ballbearings.



Regards Patrik
 
Sorry to hear about your mishap, Patrik! The little "notch" in the inner ring is really no good for fatigue stresses. There´s a lot of secondary damages to expect from such a failure. Now we will never know what the axial plays, will we? :? If have to run now. The bike needs some attention before this weekends races at Sviestad.

"Dead things are not allowed to win"
 
swedishsteel said:
Hello. I have had a main bearing breakdown last week :

I agree with Thomas, with his modification that it seems reasonable. but the thing is, I think there is a reason why Husaberg have done modification on the c/b double bearing and now last single-double-row, I don't now if they have lightened the c/b counterweight to give less gyroscopic effect and load on the bearing, Thomas mentored that they had lightened the c/b on they modified single row, and maybe this helped the life off the single row c/b

It would have been nice if we at Husaberg.org could come up with a fix that work on this problem.

Hallo Patrik.
I have more than 20pc innerrings that have snapped and a piece from the flange is gone.
We overhaul more than 30pc of engines every year and i am sure that this is the problem and solution of bearing failure.
We have recieved som parts for test from Husaberg and they are also interested in the result.
Talking to R&D in Sweden they dont belive that a single bearing in the c/b would break when its less weight. This problem with single bearing was mainly on the early 650´s with a massive weight, there was not so much problem with the 400cc c/b in 2001.
Ball bearing is not the solution due to it have limited lifetime as well, we tried last month the KTM Race bearing with hardend cage and it was not better than the std rollerbearing
It was just more work to assemble the crank in the case.
To prevent having the cage destroying everything use SKF 6206/C3 TN9, this has a composit cage and will not damege the rest of the engine if it cracks.
//Thomas
Click to expand...
 
Hello again! Haven't been able to get this off my mind, did some thinking tonight :idea: but its maybe not as good as a think, I'm a little tired right now, so maybe tomorrow when i look at it with fresh eyes its becoming stupid, and I haven't confirm that this should go or if its place for it. But anyhow. I was thinking.

some fact you must obligate to get it work probably.

Is`s the left main that go for the most off time (maybe 90%)(just my thought)
It`s the inner ring that breaks (don't Want that mounting without the support for the flange)(can do it as Thomas do but you have to change the c/b(modified) and drive shaft for that) (can be done, and for me its the best solution that I heard of, yet) but you cant do it by yourself and need modified parts.
If its possible use the new c/b.

If you use a ballbearing on the rightside you get the axial steering but you still get lower rating on the bearing and its more difficult to assemble the engine.
Now I'm getting to my point, If you use a NU206 on the left side with out flange that problem cant happen, and its free floating in axial direction, the radial is the same as NJ.
Now we need some kind of bearing that can hold the crank in the axial way.
If we use a NUP206 and mount it as a standard NJ, you assemble the engine the same and use the same tools. But we lock the right outer-race with 3 countersunk screws on the inside off the block, so it cant move in the block.
and from the outside we mount the extra flange-ring on the crank.
But how is this going to stay there :? Well now come the question that I'm not sure off.
I was thinking outside off this ring its a seal-ring and then the flywheel. the seal is 25x40x7 if we make a spacer that is lets say id25xod30x x (don't know the space) a seal-ring that is 30x40x7 is a standard. Then this spacer can press the bearing flange-ring by the flywheel and you can shims this up to get a little clearance say 0,2mm (If you must I'm not sure)
I don't know how much axial float you need in the bearing ? but when you use ballbearing you don't have any, and when the crank trow in axial movement its freefloating in the left side and cant get stuck between the bearings. and this is be me the main reason that the roller-mains goes,

So what do you think about this???
Is it Plausible you think?? please have some thought off it.
Now im going to sleep, so good night.

Regards Patrik
 

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