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6 bolt Clevite Main Bearing !!! Frustration !!!

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Pursuit

15+ Year Contributor
326
0
Apr 3, 2007
las vegas, Nevada
Okay so here is the deal , i am rebuilding a 6 bolt block , crank shaft had to be cut to .010 under , I order Clevite main bearings from ExtremePSi , STM , and few vendors from eBay ! And they all come with over sized Trust Center Bearing ! And my trust side of the crank, its great i dont even want to think about cutting it . I dont understand why those bearings are coming out of specs ? I am attaching picture that show the size of the trust side . its 2.10mm. I am really big fan of clevite bearings. And no one can explain to me why they come like that , ive been stuck for 2 months , i have 4 sets of bearings already seating in my garage, and i cant use them . Ive never had that problem with STD size clevite bearings before.


http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/8508/dsc011044resize.jpg

That's the part number MS-2076P .010 \ .25mm
 
Yep, I delt with that a number of months ago. Same exact part for a .010 cut crank. The thrust bearing was too wide and won't even sit on the crank.

I dealt with Clevite directly on that; I ended up shipping it back to them. They inspected it and found it was out of spec. They also pulled a random box off their shelf and found it was out of spec as well.

What happened next? The tech guy said they pulled their entire lot of those particular size of bearings off the shelves for re-inspection and they're not happy with the Mexican plant that produced them. I purchased them originally from JNZ Tuning.

I always wondered what happened with that. Guess they still have stock floating around. I didn't go spreading that information around initially because based on Internet research, I had not seen another instance of this issue before. I figured it was isolated and I was the only one affected at the time until they can get new stock on the shelves. I have that kind of luck.

I ended up replacing them with King XP bearings from JNZ Tuning instead. JNZ helped me out there majorly, even though I shipped the bearings back to the Clevite factory south of the border . The KingXP bearings have three grooves on the thrust surfaces instead of the two you see on all the other bearings. I mic'd them all and every measurement was bang-on with the others and in perfect OEM spec (counting the 0.01 oversize, of course). Plus they're black. That's cool.

I'm happy with what I have now, or atleast I am until I pull the caps to inspect them next year.
 
Yep, I delt with that a number of months ago. Same exact part for a .010 cut crank. The thrust bearing was too wide and won't even sit on the crank.

I dealt with Clevite directly on that; I ended up shipping it back to them. They inspected it and found it was out of spec. They also pulled a random box off their shelf and found it was out of spec as well.

What happened next? The tech guy said they pulled their entire lot of those particular size of bearings off the shelves for re-inspection and they're not happy with the Mexican plant that produced them. I purchased them originally from JNZ Tuning.

I always wondered what happened with that. Guess they still have stock floating around. I didn't go spreading that information around initially because based on Internet research, I had not seen another instance of this issue before. I figured it was isolated and I was the only one affected at the time until they can get new stock on the shelves. I have that kind of luck.

I ended up replacing them with King XP bearings from JNZ Tuning instead. JNZ helped me out there majorly, even though I shipped the bearings back to the Clevite factory south of the border . The KingXP bearings have three grooves on the thrust surfaces instead of the two you see on all the other bearings. I mic'd them all and every measurement was bang-on with the others and in perfect OEM spec (counting the 0.01 oversize, of course). Plus they're black. That's cool.

I'm happy with what I have now, or atleast I am until I pull the caps to inspect them next year.

That's just amazing , how can these people release bearings that are out of specs ! Every single vendor i try ! bearing were exact same , so I guess they all come from one place , like you said . And when purchase them from STM I wait like 4 weeks, they told me its back order from clevite , I guess they haven't fix anything yet . I hope they do , because that cost people
Time and money . ! Thanks or the response .
 
Just did a rebuild with a cut crank. My machine shop did the bottom end and found out that the "STD" size mains froms clevite are all fine. But the "oversize" bearings made for cut cranks were all wrong. They checked bearings that were for .10, .20, and .30 and they all had this problem. Oh and they were all stamped with the king bearing symbol. Looks like Clevite is buying these from king and reselling without checking. My shop ended up getting the king bearings direct and had no issues after that.
 
If you look in almost any bearing manufacturers catalog you'll find that the bearings are available in a standard thrust and a .001" oversized thrust. When a crank is ground undersize it is sometimes necessary to true up the thrust face to make it square with the journal. This is the reason for the oversize. It seems like Clevite's packaging department screwed up and put oversize bearings in a box with the std part number. Not at all uncommon. It just emphasizes the importance of mocking up an engine prior to final assembly to check things like this.
 
I would almost say when the bearings were made, all the specs were taken .25mm/.010 over.

Some crank grinders whe they grind a crank .010/.010 (.25mm/.25mm) they clean up the thrust face, to get crank end play back into spec.

Now Jam, if you have a crank grinder that can remove .0005 from each thrust face of crank, That is some talent. I applude that!
 
If you look in almost any bearing manufacturers catalog you'll find that the bearings are available in a standard thrust and a .001" oversized thrust. When a crank is ground undersize it is sometimes necessary to true up the thrust face to make it square with the journal. This is the reason for the oversize. It seems like Clevite's packaging department screwed up and put oversize bearings in a box with the std part number. Not at all uncommon. It just emphasizes the importance of mocking up an engine prior to final assembly to check things like this.

Oh, I fully agree that mock-up should happen as soon as possible to determine all your problems the most earliest on so that you can deal with issues like this in a timely manner. This easily set my build schedule back a couple weeks.

The final width of the standard bearing (oversized on journal only) should be 1.140, as per Clevite's catalogue. My Clevites measured out 1.144, which just so happened to be the journal width of my crankshaft. That's not just oversize in width as well as journal, that's straight-out incorrect.
 
And thousands upon thousands have been fine with Clevite. So many people love ACL, but the last set of ACL Race I bought had an etch across one the surface of one of the rod bearings, made by something with a knife edge. It was deep and about 5/16" long. No, it was not made by me when opening the shrinkwrap.

I just attract this sort of product QA shortcoming I guess.
 
I've use , KING , ACL , Clevite , ! With ACL race series i have problem two times already, Mostly with the main's. King bearings never problem on DD motors up to 300hp, no experience on higher power motors. And with Clevite I build engines up to from 200hp\650hp now , never had a single problem ! That's why i love them. When it comes to bearing i don't like to play around, and try new stuff , its cost too much money if something goes wrong.
 
I just had to use ACL race bearngs with an extra oil clearance and noticed that the thrust bearing is about .0005" tighter than the rest :confused: Didn't have that issue with the standard King bearings i used last time.
 
I just had to use ACL race bearngs with an extra oil clearance and noticed that the thrust bearing is about .0005" tighter than the rest :confused: Didn't have that issue with the standard King bearings i used last time.

Selling out of spec parts to people, and No one give a F$#% about it :nono: I remember back in the days , I never had messed up order or parts out of specs .
 
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What kind of crank? Is the OD of the #3 journal a different than any of the others?

Torquing the fasteners by 10 ft/lbs more or less can cause the clearance to change by up to .001". Are you using an accurate torque wrench? What kind of lubricant are you using on the threads?

Did you measure the housing bore? Also a difference in the ID of the housing bore will affect the bearing clearance.

All in all, a difference of half a thou isn't out of the ordinary as long as it's within spec.
 
A g4cs crank and, no, the main journal is roughly the same as the rest.

I'm using a digital torque wrench adapter that was calibrated to .3% error. The measurements were taken using ARP Moly lube with arp studs at 60 ft/lbs and bearings already in the bore installed. The mains were checked for straightness also.

On the final torquing i decided to go just a few lbs less on the studs just to make sure i don't have any thrust bearing issues. Or 58 ft/lbs everywhere and 55 ft/lbs on the thrust cap.

The thrust bearing clearance was between .0022-.0025" so it's well within spec i guess..

Here is the sheet with all the crank and bore measurements

You must be logged in to view this image or video.
 
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Not sure on who makes it but it's one of those expensive digital gauges that gets it down to .0001" with rougly a +/- .0002" of accuracy.
 
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