BMW Bevel Drive Bearing

[pooley]

I have a 1150gs Adventure with just over 93000 miles on the clock, 83000 done on our RTW trek.
We're two up with camping gear wieghing 500kgs.A bit heavy I know-but!
I'm on my third Bevel drive bearing!
Has anyone tried using roller bearings as a replacement? Would this improve the wieght carrying & life expectancy?
Or any other sujestions to improve the life of this pain in the butt bearing!
Regards Pooley.
www.pooleglobaltrek.com

[MotoEdde]

Contact Tom Cutter...

Rubber Chicken Racing Garage: Quality Work. Classic Touch.

I think he developed the shims to eliminate frequent issues...you cna contact him by email, and he can probably ship you the parts.

[Margus]

Shim (preload) the bearing correctly in the first place and make sure the crownwheel's 2 bits aren't loose with the glue.

See here:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...failures-38600

[pooley]

Thanks for the advice guys, but I can't understand why just making shimming adjustments will help the loading of wieght on a load of metal balls in a cage will make any difference. Again, surley roller bearings are the way forwards?
Thanks for the link, I'll contact JC and see how he got on.
Regards
Pooley.

[Margus]

Originally Posted by pooley

Thanks for the advice guys, but I can't understand why just making shimming adjustments will help the loading of wieght on a load of metal balls in a cage will make any difference.

It would, because I ALSO ride near 500kg bike 2up full gear and often in hard offroad conditions, places where most of people would never go 2 up!

And mine did well over 100,000km without any problems!

The seal started to slowly leak on mine @ 105,000km after the abuse on Ruta-40 in Argentina. I had spare seal and bearing with me, the bearing was more or less fine, but I wanted to test my ability to change the bearing in the village in Argentina - just to test the bollocks about the speculators in different forums who say you're on the road once the bearing goes - you are not. I successfully changed and re-shimmed my bearing on the road. Carrying spare bearing+seal with you takes a lot less room than a chain set, costs less too. Although as said, the bearing on my bike probably would had more wear-room left (I'd estimate at least another 20,000km). If shimmed correctly, statistically, the ball bearings should last around 150Kkm, depending how hard offroad or how much smooth-tar riding you do. Higher loads would maybe reduce 15-35% of the longetivety. Also the the manufacturing quality of each bearing plays a big roll (as I understand the manufacturing quality can vary a lot! And don't buy any cheap ones).

Originally Posted by pooley

Again, surley roller bearings are the way forwards?

In my mind there should be more drag (more friction area - rollers against bearing race), meaning considerably more heat and thus wear, while balls just roll in the oily groove (and correct shimming is to have them rolling exacly in the middle of the groove, not rolling "sideways"!). Not sure if the original bevel box casing is designed to keep up with the heat and expansion the roller would create in this case, especially in a very hot and hard conditions. But I could be totally wrong here too.

As you already noticed, some are testing roller bearings, let's see how they do.

[pooley]

All good advice, thanks. The old girl's done 93000 miles now and this bearing is the only repetative problem, and as you say, cheeper than a chain and sprocket set!
So when does the shaft let go?
Pooley

[jc]

I've done 22,000km since my modification, no sign of wear yet. Previous bearings went out on less than 18,000km, done by dealers as well as myself, makes no difference. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I had enough after the 5th time. I will add a detailed description on the mod, including contact details where I bought the bearing in this week. I'm in Bogota now, so have some time updating website etc. I've just replaced the shaft seal on the dif and had to remove the shaft, no wear on the universals whatsoever, not bad for 153,000km.

Johan