WCP SS WCD Loose Bearings

Posting here on behalf of a few of my students, who are having some concerns regarding the Single Speed West Coast Drive gearbox from West Coast Products. They’ve gone ahead and done a dry assemble of the gearboxes and have noticed that the output shaft construction is not actually held down in any way, resulting in the whole shaft, plus bearings, popping out very easily.

Any suggestions? We could always secure the bearings into the plates ourselves, but given that the instructions even mention when to include the grease but don’t mention Locktite or glue, I wonder if maybe this isn’t how it’s supposed to go?

Some pictures
Shaft in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw6isPTQeT_WZXgwX3pQamhwUEU/
Shaft out: https://drive.google.com/a/mtps.us/file/d/0Bw6isPTQeT_WMHZ1M2pjd2J2UEU/

Thanks!

I’m on mobile atm

But the gearbox plates were designed for a press fit and a few customers over the year have emailed us about this issue.

The three easy fixes are:

  1. Loctite the bearing in

  2. Flip the bearing around and it’ll solve your issue. Once your wheel is on the shaft it will not be able to go in either direction.

  3. If you can’t or don’t want to flip the bearing. Take a washer and bolt and thread it through one of the holes next to the bearing.

This is only an issue with the wcd version and after this season we will most likely modify the plate to have holes to bolt retain the bearing.

Please email me directly or support at wcproducts.net if you need anything else.

I can second the Loctite solution. We had a similar issue with the loose bearings and Loctiting them in fixed it (although that was Recycle Rush where it did not come under much stress).

Note if you want to flip the bearing, you will need an extra spacer between the 1/2 inch bearing and the gear. We did that this year, and I believe it was an extra 1/16th needed, but it might have been 1/8th. You’ll have to check.

R.C, it would definitely be cool if next year it had bearing mount holes in the same location as the shifters. That was the one problem we had with our custom shifters that used the 3 CIM SS plates, and if those bearing holes were there from the start it would make things so much easier.

Agreed

Oversight on my end. We have used press fit only in the past but over the years have made sure geometrically stuff is retained. In the normal non wcd ss it’s not an issue but in the wcd version it is.

I’ll make sure a better fix happens at the end of the season.

I’m not sure where the holes are, but with ours, we use 2 bolts only with no washers.