Quote:
Originally Posted by southernstar
thom, what numbers do we have for the longevity of unsealed ceramic bearings using splash oil ( I mean, apart from the recommended replacement at 4 years/50,000 miles)?
Brad
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Whatever data we have is empirical evidence gained through the many years and thousands of bearings we have installed and serviced. Without any precedence for bearing life, we had to give our best guess for what would be a conservative service interval for these bearings. We now know that the dual row, triple row, and later 06-08 bearing, when upgraded with one of our IMS Retrofit or IMS Upgrades, is likely a permanent fix to last the life of the engine (or until something else fails in the engine).
As far as the single row IMS Retrofit, we've seen many easily clear this 4 year, 50,000 mile interval with zero issues. We use the same single row bearing as part of the bearing stack for the triple row IMS Upgrade and with over a 1000 of those in service with zero issues- the bearing itself isn't an issue. However, there have been some limited failures of the single row bearing.
We know that of the failures we've seen, most of them can be attributed to installation error, but that aside, I know that there have probably been an equal number of improperly carried out dual row IMS retrofits and those haven't had problems. Case in point, we have seen several dual row bearings that were installed in engines where the original bearing had failed. Even with extensive cleanup of the sump and many oil changes, contamination from the original failure damaged the replacement bearing, but they keep running and don't fail, whereas, when the same was done with a single row, they almost immediately fail.
So if all these other ceramic hybrid bearings have been working flawlessly with zero failures only with lubrication from the sump, what conclusions would you draw.
The single row bearing by itself has the lowest load capacity. The bearing's lack of load capacity is the only variable here.
Granted, many single row bearings last well over 10 years/100,000 miles with no problems where others fail much sooner. There are lots of variables affecting bearing life, all of which have been discussed at length over the years. Although the IMS Retrofit with the single row 6204 ceramic hybrid bearing addresses many of the issues of a conventional ball bearing in this application, the issue of load capacity is one that could not be addressed with a direct replacement until we released the IMS Solution and which will be addressed next year with the next generation of IMS Retrofit.
I for one won't won't be happy until we achieve a 100% success rate.