Just read a report about cutterhead bearing failure on an Ellicott 370

I was looking through some old maintenance logs from a job on the Mississippi River last summer, and nearly half the downtime was from bearings that failed 200 hours early because guys weren't flushing the grease ports after each shift. Has anyone else seen this kind of pattern on your machine, or is it just that one crew cutting corners?

3 comments

3 Comments

flores.mark1d ago

Wait, you mean nobody was flushing the grease ports?

henry1501d ago

Read on a heavy equipment forum last month that some guys go years without touching grease ports, just top off the oil and call it good. That sounds like a recipe for bearings to seize up and cost you a whole machine. If you check the manual most manufacturers say flush every 500 hours, which seems reasonable to me.

aliceharris1d ago

Haven't you ever worked with a crew that's been running the same machine for fifteen years and knows exactly when a bearing is about to go just by listening to it? I'm not saying skip the manual, but 500 hour flushes seem excessive if you're greasing properly every shift and using good quality grease. We've stretched intervals to 700 or 800 hours on our 370 with no issues, but we also check for heat and vibration daily. That crew cutting corners probably never learned to listen to the machine or check for small problems before they turn into big ones.