All I need is a good machine shop to press the old ones out and press the new ones in right?



There is no real special way that they get installed, correct?



The place I took the rotors to was wondering about the little bent over tab that holds the bearing in place, he was wondering if thats a special loctating tab......



Also I've heard that the new bearings should be put in a freezer to make them "shrink" a little to make them easier to install. Any truth to that?



Thanks guys



Joe

if they couldnt figure out the locking tab by looking at the old one, yikes!

Man, I thought the same thing!



Yes, anyone with a clue and a press should be able to do it. Yes, stuff the bearing in the freezer before you try to press it and it doesn't hurt to heat the rotor slightly. Yes, the tab is here to lock the bearing. It needs to line up with the slot in the rotor.

The alignment tab serves no purpose. There is no indexing feature that must be maintained.

I grind them off of the bearing.



I have yet to heat a rotor or cool a bearing for installation. Just a film of red Locktite, and a slight chamfer on the bore in the rotor, so it doesn't shave any bearing. You should make up a bearing pusher for main and rotor bearings. The pusher should have a flange so the bearing stops at exactly the right depth. That way a fairly stupid press operator can do it right. In my case that would be me.



If you hose the bearing with a missed shift or whatever. That tab will keep the bearing from spinning for about 1 nanosecond. However that tab can ruin an engine if the bearing is pressed in and the tab is not lined up properly. It will raise a lump in the bearing and make it fail, if you can even get the crank through it.

If that happens to you, just die grind the lump off and go on with your life. It won't hurt a thing.



Lynn E. Hanover

I have acheived the best/easiest results with an Arbor press instead of using a hydraulic press. the mazda factory tool is pretty snazzy also

Does Mazda actually sell the tool for removal/installation? What does it cost?

Yes. The rotor bearing tool is listed in the FSM as 49-0813-240 and the main bearing tool is 49-0813-235. Neither number works on Mazdacomp's site so I couldn't find the dealer price. Mazdatrix wants $87 and $71 respetively. They're very nice tools with removeable stops for installing the bearing. When you take the stop off the tool is the size of the ID of the rotor/stat gear so it will cleanly push the bearing out. I was lucky enough to get a set off Ebay a few years ago.



http://www.mazdatrix.com/pictures/tools/brgrotor.jpg

Once again guys, thanks for the info.



Your help is greatly appreciated!!

the tools dont come from mazda, so they wont show up in the parts database (yes the comp database is shared with all the dealers and whomever else)

oh-oh II got MIKEY!!!!!!!!!



Part No.

0000-09-0103

Description

MAIN BEARING PULLER AND INSTALLER

Notes

To install or remove main bearings from stationary gears. #49-0813-235

I cant show the price on mazdacomp due to my racers agreement



On the Comp PArts PAge, scroll down on the first pick menu to "SPECIAL TOOLS"; all the special tools are then shown.

I got a local shop to machine some for me, worked well and was cheaper than the Mazda tools.

lol, that thing is cheap! $51.10... i cant order it. its a comp part

Thanks!

I went to the local Mazda dealer today and I can get the rotor bearing tool next day, the warehouse shows 1 in stock....its about $100 Can.

The other tool isn't available in Canada....at least thats what he told me.

Don't the surface temperatures exceed the temperature limit for locktite?

Good point.



The surface of the rotor exposed to the fire runs between 350 and 400 degrees.

(from what Iv'e read). The bearing could not survive anything like that, under load,

so, appearantly the oil cooling is adequate to maintain a far lower temperature around

the bearing bore. We try to stay under 190 oil temp, so the bearing is being supplied

oil at that temperature. If the whole rotor were to get as hot as the surface, the bearing

would loose its crush fit, and all would be lost. But the bearing overlay would be moving off

the interface before that, anyway.



If you press out two used bearings with a manual press, you can tell which one had the Loctite on it.





Lynn E. Hanover

Thanks for the tip Lynn.

I am just curious, but I take it you do this as a precaution to help prevent bearings from spinning?

Just as with the magic tab, the locktite will not prevent a bearing from spinning that has welded itself to the crank. If a person were to hone out the bore just a bit, and sand out the bearing ID with some 600 silicone carbide paper in solvent, to get a bit more clearance, then you want to add some help for the lost crush fit.

The loctite also helps make a thermal conductor. Some rotors have dismal machining in the bore ID. As though they were done with dull tooling. The Locktite fills those voids.



If you get the oil too hot, then you are skating on thin ice. The bearing gets bigger at the same rate as the bore of the rotor, but bigger means more clearance off the crank, and some more flow, for less pressure.



The bearing wear surface looses strength quickly with heat. The loaded oil film gets very hot in the wedge.



The oil being sprayed into the rotor is cooler than the wedge oil, so cooling continues.



The only way it is cooled is with the oil,so, if the oil is already too hot, the material on the bearing starts to move away from the loaded zone. If you rebuild you may see some flaking at the edges of the bearing. Also so flakes in the filter paper. You do cut open your filters, right? If you get it hot enough to fail the bearing

it will get hot enough in two nanoseconds to fail the Locktite,and the bearing will spin in the bore.



But I think it helps a little on the heat flow so I keep at it. I also run three Setrab 13 row coolers.





Lynn E. Hanover

When you order a new rotor bearing from Mazda does it come with the locating tab already bent over? You you have to prescicley line up the tab with its groove when pressing it in?

Or is the bearing completly round and then once its pressed in, you just punch over the bearing into its groove?



I've never seen a new bearing un-installed before.

The tab is bent over when you get it. Notice the puzzle lock that is used to form up the cylinder shape, and keep the joint a bit less than an open seam line. The bearing starts out as a flat piece. Some times the bearing is not all that round and only gets good enough when installed into the supposedly round bearing bore in the rotor. Same for the main bearings.



I grind off the tab on the rotor bearings. It doesn't do anything.



On the main bearings it is required to align the oil holes. Draw a line on the bearing with a black marker in line with the tab, using a small square. Align that line with the center of the notch in the stationary gear, and press it home. Works just about every time. Dress up the hole in the bearing to mate with the oil gallery in the front stationary gear. Use a carbide so there are no stone bits stuck in the bearing.



I radius the back side of the three window rear bearing oil ports before installation. It probably doesn't matter but I like to do it.





Lynn E. Hanover

Grind off the Tab ??? Doesn't that help keep it from spinning inside the rotor?

Well,............no.





The hole in the rotor is poorly finished.



When you press in the bearing, the plating flows into the rough

surface of the bore, along with the Locktite. The bearing is a bit bigger than the hole, and it is hard to push

in the bearing, even with a hydraulic press.



So..............the bearing has one hell of a grip on the inside of the hole.



A grip that is about 1,000 times stronger than the tab.



A failure of such magnitude that the bearing will spin but for the tab is of short duration.

So..............I am guessing that the duration of such a situation could be no longer than

about one nanosecond. Just a guess mind you, maybe it's two nanoseconds before the

bearing begins to rotate.



The point is that the tab idea wouldn't work if the thing had six tabs, or ten tabs.



Let us say that as you grab 5th at 9,600 RPM you blow off an oil line. The oil film is supporting maybe 2,000

PSI, three miliseconds later there is no oil film, and the overly begins to weld to the crank.



One second later the weld is complete and the crank has stopped. If nothing in the driveline breaks, the rear wheels will also stop. The car begins to rotate around the virtical axis. And so on................



This is due to the press fit not breaking loose. If it does break the press fit bond, that will require that several hundreds of foot pounds of torque are in play. Only 50 or so will strip off te tab.



So........if the tab does nothing........and the tab left in place can ruin the bearing if installed out of index.

........I grind it off.





Lynn E. Hanover

Good way of dumbing it down for me LOL!



Thanks for the info Lynn!!

If u got a press and some spare engine bits the backing lug to the front pulley is the right size you can use it to press the old ones out and the new ones in. To line the lock tabs up scribe some lines down the back using a square.

I lost a rotor bearing a while back in the IT car. It seems that the bearing got oil starved (never figured out why) and welded to the e shaft, seemingly ruining it, then it obviously spun in the rotor bore. I think the rotor is toast but havent messed with it. I replaced the rotating assy with one from a spare engine. One day Ill fool with it, thanks for the clue on the crappy machinging on the rotor bore. Maybe the rotor is salvagable after all.

most likely air bubbles swimming inside your oil would cause that failure.

Whenever I press out used bearings with a manual press...I jump whenever they make that first CLANK sound. Gets me EVERY time.

I recently took a pair of GSL-SE rotors to the machine shop to get some new bearings pressed in, this is the first pair the machinest has ever done.

He told me that his 5 ton hydrulic press wouldn't pop the old bearings out, so he used the 10 ton press. He was quite amazed at how much pressure it took to get the old bearings out.

Is that normal or should they have come out easier?

Really? It ran great till it popped. What would cause the bubbles? Cavitation at the pump?

the judge posted his tips in the FAQ section.

https://www.nopistons.com/forums/ind...howtopic=47218

Its easier if you have the correct tools. It is a weird bearing, using the wrong tools can also damage the new bearings...

http://www.atkinsrotary.com/store/cu...me.php?cat=568

I prefer the REAL tool

I wanted to stress something out here..... when your installing new bearings.. for your own good. MAKE SURE THE PRESS YOUR USING IS FIRM!!!!!!!!!! when I say firm I mean... it does not move side to side.. wickle... shake... move.... tilt... if the press is doing this. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME.... why I say this.. very simple. if the press.. tilts... your bearing is going to go in wrong. 90% of the time it will create a TAPER.. in one part of the bearing you will measure .002 of and inch clearance between your eccentric shaft journal and the bearing and on the other side of the bearing you will measure .003 of and inch. the rotor bearing is going to be tight on one side and would create some failure.. you could always fix a problem like that but y? if you could avoid it..plus use the tool made for bearing installation from mazda..



theres tons of more tips.. soon to be released..

Whenever you get the chance to post it up, Judge!

ITO, this is why I prefer to use an ARBOR PRESS vs. a HYDRAULIC PRESS. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png

It is my understanding that honing removes not enough material to be able to measure.



If the locktite does survive those temperatures it will defineatly close up bearing clearances.



Clevite engineerings have told me they have seen temps 100 degrees hotter that what we have measured coming off the crank on pistons engines( we measured 450degrees F)....

Well, honing will take away as much material as you want it to. It just makes for a nicer finish and a rounder hole.





The point of honing the bore of the rotor is to remove material so as to increase the bore size, so as to increase the bearing bore size, so as to increase the bearing to crank clearance. While doing this you loose much of the crush fit of the bearing. So, you loctite it at the minimum and it is real smart to drill and tap holes so you can bolt the bearing in place with flat head (socket head) screws. Three per end works fine. Removing the indium overly eliminates the flowing of indium at very high temps, so you cannot loose the bearing from locally overheated oil.



Oil temps in the wedge may be astronomical and even though the actual amount (volume) of oil is tiny, it is a major sourse of oil temperature.



If you press a new bearing into a rotor (more likely on a lightened racing rotor) and it goes in real easy, better check the bore diameter to see if it has been enlarged. (you should have checked it already)



There should be screw holes to give this away, but not always. The very smooth finish of the modified bore would also be a clue.





Lynn E. Hanover

Well then I guess you prefer to spend unnecessary amounts of money to press them out? I used the front e-shaft pulley boss as my press tool to remove mine at a local machine shop. It was an absolute perfect fit. It's funny how Mazda made special expensive tools to use when certain tools already exist with-in the engine. LOL!

Pics!