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That time an old timer told me to grease the cutterhead bearings every shift | Dredge Operators - SMM Buzz

That time an old timer told me to grease the cutterhead bearings every shift

I thought he was just being paranoid, figured once a week would be fine. After 3 months, I burned one out on a sandy job near Baton Rouge and lost half a day swapping it. Anybody else learn that lesson the hard way?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.wyatt4mo ago

Oh man, that's rough. I had almost the exact same thing happen on a job down in Texas. I was running a big dozer in some nasty caliche dust and figured I'd just hit the zerks every other day. Three weeks in I heard that lovely squeal and by the time I got the old bearing out it had welded itself to the shaft. Total nightmare. Now I keep a grease gun in my truck and just do it first thing every morning before the engine even warms up. Takes two minutes and I've never had another bearing fail on me since.

kevin_harris783mo ago

@king.wyatt I get why you do it that way, but I've always greased things up after the engine warms up so the grease works its way into the joints better. Cold grease on a cold bearing just sits there until things heat up.

wright.lisa2mo ago

Woah hold up, I gotta push back a little on this one! I mean yeah sandy soil is rough on stuff but greasing every single shift sounds like overkill to me unless you're literally underwater or something. I've run machines for years in dusty conditions and never had a bearing fry that fast. Sounds like maybe that old timer had a bad batch of grease or something. Half the time I see guys overgreasing and blowing out seals which causes more problems than it solves. If you're using good quality grease and hitting those zerks every couple days on a normal job, I think you're fine. Maybe check your grease gun for contamination or if the bearing was just a dud from the factory.