Installed bearings in Spartan strut

[Chrisg81983]

I put a new strut on Spartan and in just a few runs I noticed a considerable amount of play in it. I then thought why not put bearings in it. So I used a punch and drove out the bronze bushings and cut about 3 millimeters off of it and then pressed it back in leaving room to press an additional 5x8 bearing in it. Everything fit like it was made to be that way. It works well so far. I will post pics later.

[785boats]

I would replace the front bushing in the strut with a bearing too. Make sure it is far enough into the stinger to support the front of the stub shaft. A common problem with some replacement stingers is that the bushings are further apart than the length of the stub shaft so the front bushing has the flex shaft running in it. That might be why your bushings flogged out so quickly. The first thing to check with a new stinger is the position of the front bush in relation to the front of the stub shaft.

[Chrisg81983]

I usually would on something I was building but I bought this spartan new out of the box I just took it for granted it was correct but now it is fixed and all is well. Since I have put sealed bearings in it I have had no problems and it holds grease much better now then the factory setup did.

[Hot wire]

Did you notice any diffrence in speed, performance or run time? I would think there would be less resistance meaning more run time and speed

[Chrisg81983]

I have two spartans one was fine out of the box and one was majorly wrong. It gets up to speed quicker and smoother it was putting a lot of excess load on the power system.