New Tom Wood driveshaft question

PRNDL

guess we'll never know
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My driveshaft arrived from Tom Woods on Friday. I got around to unboxing it and as soon as I had it out of the plastic wrap, one of the bearing caps popped off. No big deal just pop it back on, but when I picked it up, I see a free roller in the cap.

PXL_20220109_043918705.MP.jpg


Odd... there aren't any obvious gaps in the installed rollers where it looks like it could have emerged from. It looks like this all the way around:
PXL_20220109_043932133.MP.jpg


So I pulled the other cap, marked an index roller with a blob of grease and counted the rollers on each. After counting each several times to be sure, there are 32 rollers installed in each cap.

PXL_20220109_044454680.MP.jpg


What are the odds that the cap is fine and there's... just a random spare roller hanging out in the cap? I'm going to send it over to TW and see what they say. My guess is its fine and I can run these caps, but is just so strange.
 
  • Wow
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Maybe TW is off-shoring their work due to employee shortages? 😵‍💫

Just kidding, of course! Couldn't resist adding that 'tasteless' joke.
 
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My driveshaft arrived from Tom Woods on Friday. I got around to unboxing it and as soon as I had it out of the plastic wrap, one of the bearing caps popped off. No big deal just pop it back on, but when I picked it up, I see a free roller in the cap.

View attachment 301506

Odd... there aren't any obvious gaps in the installed rollers where it looks like it could have emerged from. It looks like this all the way around:
View attachment 301509

So I pulled the other cap, marked an index roller with a blob of grease and counted the rollers on each. After counting each several times to be sure, there are 32 rollers installed in each cap.

View attachment 301510

What are the odds that the cap is fine and there's... just a random spare roller hanging out in the cap? I'm going to send it over to TW and see what they say. My guess is its fine and I can run these caps, but is just so strange.
Remove that roller bearing and run that ujoint. Let’s get this thing back on the road!
 
I don't know why it's being said to not accept my answer and to only accept an answer from Tom but you'll have to settle for my answer. Tom (my dad) is for all intents and purposes retired. I still talk to him several times a week about the business but regarding day to day things he no longer comes into the shop and I am acting as the General Manager. It has been that way for over a year now. My full name is Shawn Thomas Wood so you could say that you are getting the answer from someone who is 2/3 Thomas Wood. ;)

Now that I have addressed that awkward concern/issue or maybe joke, I can tell you where that needle bearing came from. When we paint the shafts, to avoid getting paint on the exposed bearing caps, we remove them and replace them with "paint caps". The paint caps are basically just bearing caps that we use over and over to essentially mask the joint and keep that part of the joint paint free. When the pain is dry we remove the paint caps, put the normal caps back on, then grease (where applicable) and wrap up the shaft. I am very sure that one of the needle bearings in one of the paint caps fell over and stuck to the end of the trunnion. When swapping back over to the normal cap we didn't notice the rogue needle bearing. This is something we should have caught though and I'm sorry that we didn't. All that being said the solution is indeed to remove that needle bearing, throw it away, and put the cap back on.

You can rest assured that there are not downed needle bearings in the other caps as this would create enough interference that we would not have been able to get the snap rings installed.