Originally Posted by
houston
sorry paul , i meant to answer your Q earlier but.......... well sometimes an elephant forgets
in my findings over the years , the biggest sign of a bad front has literally came from excess oil leaking out the front bearing . when i pull the crank , which i tear my engines aprt for inspection fairly often , i am looking for some rust discoloring on the crankshaft that lets me know that the bearing has been seizing , bad bearing or just need cleaned out , reassembled and oiled if thats the case .
no worries - there's so much info on this thread anyway that it's a great read no matter what. Actually I think at some point I'd make a word doc out of the best sections, split tuning/break-in/maintenance/... . all good stuff. Shame I don't need a mill at the moment as otherwise I'd happily buy one from you
Thanks,
Paul
PS: my crank does show the symptoms you are talking, ie discolored rust spots where it rests on the front bearing. Sounds like I need a new front bearing indeed. Of course I don't have the gear to do it myself. I'll try to find a local solution as last time I shipped a mill for a rebuild to the US it took me about 2mths to get it back since the US customs went completely anal about it
