Which Steering Head Bearings for R50/2 ?

[richard t]

Please to hear from another OAE Duane... Most guys have never stuck to a steel pole or seen solid mercury!

and ....Yes the 'mechanics' in Antarctica were excellent -
The guy who looked after our generators could fix anything - when the balloon tracking Radar burnt out he fixed it; including rewinding the transformers by hand. He later made a mechanical system which linked to an atomic clock signal so the cycles were precise and kept all the instruments on time...That in 1971.

PS When your C130's flew in to Halley you even had better trash than we did! - Lobster tails in the emergency rations too!

My cousin's daughter spent a tour there 2 years ago. She said when both water well went down at the same time, she had to melt a lot of snow. Duane would find her stories quite interesting.

[Hoof]

Incidentally - to get back to the subject; I replaced the steering head ball bearings with taper bearings - very easy to do and the R50/2 now flies along in a reasonably straight line.

PS all the water at Halley was melted from snow shovelled from the surface into a shaft which led to a melt tank. (The Base was 30ft under the ice) The Chippy cleaned it out the tank and discovered no end of rubbish had gone in with the snow over the years including many Husky turds. He used a few drops of disinfectant to finish the clean out which made the tea taste horrible for about a month!

[MikeL46]

Interesting if BMW had special bearings made when there are so many off the shelf taper bearings around. Now I am more than curious!

Even special bearings have a size...I'll report back when I find out.

Best wishes

BMW didn't spec a special size, they used the loose ball and race bearing. The tapered roller replacements are special.

Mike

[Rob Frankham]

Interestingly, now that this thread has been resurrected. 51 34 12 taper roller bearings are listed as a stock size both in the UK and the US...

https://www.123bearing.co.uk/bearing-34W-51W.php

https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32851063605.html

So not as exclusive as we might be led to believe...

Rob