Had a cutterhead bearing lock up on me last Tuesday in the middle of a channel job

I was working a little creek off the Mississippi near Baton Rouge. About 2 hours in, I heard this grinding noise and the cutterhead just stopped spinning. Checked the lube points and found water in the housing. Had to pull the whole unit and swap the bearing. Cost me about $400 for the part and a full day of downtime. Anyone else seen this happen after heavy rain?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake9861mo ago

$400 seems steep for a bearing...

jamie7701mo ago

My buddy runs a small shop that rebuilds these units and he told me the markup on OEM bearings is actually pretty thin once you figure in the R&D costs and liability insurance they carry. The real money is on the labor side when they put it in, not the part itself. That $400 includes a lot of testing and tolerance matching that keeps the whole machine from grenading down the road.

the_tessa1mo ago

@jake986 I see it different from @jamie770, $400 is a lot for just one bearing no matter how much testing they claim.