Combines 94 R52 Main drive shaft

Actually is is unusual to 'lock up'. This is the highest stress area on the machine. The main culprit is lack of torque on the nut on the end of the shaft. It goes to like 350-450 ' n's=- The total torque is not the most important factor - it is the keeping it tight for the first 25 hours of operation after replacement that is critical. It CANNOT be torqued once and run. Torque it, run under field conditions for about 30 mins and torque again. Continue this process until the nut will not move to the torque setting it ws origionally at. We also pop out the seals of the bearings and check the grease pac. There should be a 50% pac of grease. IF it is not correct, we clean out the old grease and repac one side with high temp = wheel brgs grease will work as well- full. do not go over 50% cavity fill.

I'd say normally you would growling or vibration prior to shaft getting hot enough to bend. Most commonly the guys will lose cylinder speed because oring very near to bearing will fail from heat. I suppose an exception hear would be if a guy was running with varible slowed all the way in one range or the other. Be sure that inner race of bearing has not eroded away the hub that presses against it. If this has happened the washer that is next to big nut will bottom out on shoulder of shaft prior to putting cylinder varible assembly tight against inner race of bearing. If inner race of bearing is not squeshed tight it could spin out on shaft long before bearing fails and the varible will not become a solid fixture on end of shaft. Best of luck

I ran the day before and didn't notice anything. I serviced the machine the next morning and started cutting soybean. I went app. 100 yds. and knew something wasn't right. It seemed to be really loading the machine and a different noise. I guess that would be the growling you were talking about. I went back to the shop, and started checking things. I turned the belt to the rotor it appeared to be free or at least not tight. I put a bucket of tools in the seat ( I know not real smart) turned on the seperator walked around the machine I still could not pin point the problem. I just assumed I was hearing things. I ran it for app 15 minutes when it failed. I have not gotten the hub your talking about off the shaft to check for damage. I ordered all the bearing on that shaft and a new shaft. I couldn't get parts until monday and it's going to rain so a friend of finished me up yesterday. Thank you for your input. I truely appreciate your input. Any tips would be helpful.