When the bearing went bad in our pump , i could feel it just by spinning the shaft. and it had movement............

Pull the d/l and spin it

mine was really wasted

Could be, how long has it been since you greased the front bearing (D/L) zerk? Could be there too (There is a bearing in there, hence the zerk fitting).

Ray

Pull the handhole cleanout cover (or if it's easy to remove, pull the loader out and do this from underneath), reach your hand in and try to move the shaft forward and backward. ANY signs of movement is a sign that the bearing is fried.

You gotta think...that bearing not only has to deal with rotational force, but there's also hundreds of pounds of bowl pressure pushing on the back of the impeller. Since the shaft/impeller assembly is "suspended" from the thrust and tail bearings (with some support from the packing), that bowl pressure also is being applied to that thrust bearing as well. Kinda makes you wanna put the race bearing in doesn't it?

We use a stethescope or long screw driver against the bearing cap and to the ear to "listen" , early thrust brg failures "present" as a whirring/growling (not to be confused with "stucatto" type driveline "machine noise" ) Kreg think I missed you yesterday? couldn't find my friiken head set in time ! Tom

X2 with some more information for ya....I am a service technician and we do vibration analysis on large pieces of equipment, FWIW, roller type bearings (does not apply to sleeve bearings) will not make a cyclic noise, but more random clicking, the reason for this is first there are to races and the ball speed is constant, the ball actually travels further on the outside race than the inside, so the ball technicall never hits the same way twice, if the noise heard is cyclic (meaning contant speed) then there is probably a mechanical issue....

Tom, have you guys ever seen a vibration meter (also called an accelerometer)?, I used to use the SKF version on stern drives, never had a chance to use it on a jet (they're normally a little too obvious).

We could tell what bearings were bad before we even tore them down.

GT