So, if the race has "walked" outward, that means the bearing can also walk out as well, since the retaining ring will move out along with the inner race. As an engineer with nearly 40 years experience, you'll forgive me if I say that this seems like a rather poor setup, as you are depending solely on a press fit between the pinion shaft and the inner race to keep everything together.

 

yep, seems a lip on the oil pump gear would stop all this, but just a guess, the flywheels must be out bad to push the race out.

 

The bearing actually did walk out a little bit before, which I noticed last time i was in there. The snapring had come off and was laying in the bottom of the cam chest. At that time the inner race hadn't walked out so I cleaned it all up, pressed the bearing back in, replaced pinion gears ( it was due anyway) and put a new snapring on. It wasn't until I tore into it for some winter head work that I thought to check how it was all looking in there. Glad I did.

 

Sounds like a good excuse for a set of 89 inch s&s wheels

 

Don't waste your yime on an 89"er go straight to a 96"er....you won't regret it....

 

So I got all the gears out of the way to get a better look at that race and the runout of the shaft.

Gave the race a very gentle tap with a piece of PVC pipe and a rubber mallet.... it slid right back in to place. WTF. I thought those were supposed to be pressed pretty snug on to the shaft.

There's also noticeable movement on the pinion shaft, so at this point I'm splitting open the case and getting the flywheels on a trueing stand. Also looking in to why that race is so loose. Could be the whole assembly is shot.

 

Let us know what you find.

 

On mine there was too much side play in the connecting rods. The crank was sent to Darkhorse CrankWorks. Once they took the crank apart, they determined that the inner crank bearing was shot and had to put oversizebushings and pins in the connecting rods. The cases were sent to Darkhorse and they repaired the Timken/Main bearing bore as main bearings were loose in case. Darkhorse also line bored and lapped the cases and put the bottom end back together and sent it back to my indy.


Smooth bottom end...but if I had to do it again I'd have gone with the 89 crank and probably upped it to a 96.