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Another victim of Cat Quality!

anyone know why cat did this in the first place lol? Every other snowmobile I can think of needs some motivation and encouragement to get the bearing on and off the shaft. I even came across a puller in my shop that I believe I had purchased for my rev xp to do this same job. Common sense will tell you that the bearing will spin on the shaft if it cant overcome the resistance in the bearing from grease. This is likely gonna be worse for sleds that sleep outside and the grease gets thicker. The bearing doesnt need the grip of hell on the shaft to hold it from spinning, it just needs enough to overcome that resistance and a smidge extra for safe measure.. The bearing on my axys 800 wasnt really super tight on the shaft, not nearly as tight as my sidewinder is now, and it had zero slippage on the shaft. Other sleds need pullers to get them off.The 2 strokes, even 600's suffer from this so its not just an issue with high horsepower machines. I just cant imagine someone approved production at that spec, the bearing literally slides right off a new shaft. Whats the reason??
 

We've been "pondering" this question for years!
I met CAT guys that fix this problem the day they bring them home.
They have spare shafts sprayed to spec with better bearings ready before their new model sled even gets home.
They also true the whole shaft.
He said 2 in 10 are good, 8 are fixable & 2 he has to throw away.

These guys buy new sleds every other year & have been doing this since the first Turbos.............sad.............just sad!
 
Turboflash said:
Has anyone heard of any issues with conventional welding on the journals on the track shaft? I'm referring to shaft becoming brittle due to the extreme heat. When I had my shaft spray-welded (which doesn't use much heat) the shop doing usually does electric motor armatures and shafts where bearing has spun. They told me they do not use wire-feed, TIG, or arc on shafts like this because too much heat is needed and that makes the shaft get brittle potentially causing it to break at some future point. Anyone had any experiences like that? Spray-welding costs more due to it being more time consuming. It's faster to use one of other welding techniques.
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Conventional welding to build up material on the shaft is not recommended, by me anyway. These driveshafts are definitely alloy steel, of what variety I have no clue. Welding any alloy steel will change its hardness and can cause hydrogen cracks in the HAZ zone.

Turboflash did it right and had his spray welded. You don’t want to loose a driveshaft or track at 125mph......been there, done that.
 
ClutchMaster said:
Conventional welding to build up material on the shaft is not recommended, by me anyway. These driveshafts are definitely alloy steel, of what variety I have no clue. Welding any alloy steel will change its hardness and can cause hydrogen cracks in the HAZ zone.

Turboflash did it right and had his spray welded. You don’t want to loose a driveshaft or track at 125mph......been there, done that.
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Great now I'm questioning my decision. How about installing a sleeve? Would that be a viable option?
 
Spoke to the machinist, he said its low carbon steel and it welded up easy. If it was a higher carbon steel he would have concerns with the heat.
 
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stevewithOCD said:
We've been "pondering" this question for years!
I met CAT guys that fix this problem the day they bring them home.
They have spare shafts sprayed to spec with better bearings ready before their new model sled even gets home.
They also true the whole shaft.
He said 2 in 10 are good, 8 are fixable & 2 he has to throw away.

These guys buy new sleds every other year & have been doing this since the first Turbos.............sad.............just sad!
Click to expand...
After I got my used shaft back from spray-welding, I put in my lathe to check how round and true the drive wheels were. I was surprised they were actually very concentric and true so I didn't have to do anything. I was wondering how many of these are way off? I've done 3 sleds so far and all 3 were very good.
 
DMCTurbo said:
Great now I'm questioning my decision. How about installing a sleeve? Would that be a viable option?
Click to expand...

I did have one customer that put shim stock between the shaft inner bearing race and then used my wedge to snug it up. I will check with him to see how it fared this past season.
 
justinator said:
This is likely gonna be worse for sleds that sleep outside and the grease gets thicker.
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Never thought about that. I thought about the grease getting thick during the cold but not about the ones that stay in a heated garage. Maybe that why some dont have problems. My sled sits inside every night and my shaft is good after 8k miles.

Someone could make some money selling properly sized shafts.
 
While this isn't a technical post on the driveshaft issue, the hair on my neck stands up a bit when I see the "victim of Cat quality" referenced. This problem is darn widespread dating back a few years now. Yamaha has their name on the Sidewinder not CAT and has done nothing to fix the issue. It's about "Yamaha quality" at this point. Mindboggling they want us to spend $17K on a sled with a fairly major issue and they don't fix it.
 
Put that 6009 bearing in your freezer overnight and then pull it out next day and see how hard it turns. Grease gets thick in cold. And that's just a regular house refrigerator that doesn't get as cold as your sled gets sitting outside at night in many places we ride. Most freezers are set to around 0 degF. Just think how stiff that bearing is at -20 degF?!
Takes a long time to "warm" the bearing up when you start riding. In fact, based on my rudimentary testing, the bearing never does get even warm. Stays cool/cold all the time. There's lots of snow cooling the track shaft and tunnel right by the bearing.
 
STAIN said:
Never thought about that. I thought about the grease getting thick during the cold but not about the ones that stay in a heated garage. Maybe that why some dont have problems. My sled sits inside every night and my shaft is good after 8k miles.

Someone could make some money selling properly sized shafts.
Click to expand...
Could be a number of things for some guys, heated garages and tight tracks and maybe shafts on the better end of the spec to begin with? Like turbo flash mentioned that grease takes a while to warm up while riding and its not gonna warm up much if the shaft is slipping inside of it 50% of the time.
 
DMCTurbo said:
Spoke to the machinist, he said its low carbon steel and it welded up easy. If it was a higher carbon steel he would have concerns with the heat.
Click to expand...
I would not have had it done if I had any doubts but like I mentioned before, the cat dealer up the road has fixed many this way over the past few years and zero issues after ,both on 2 strokes and turbo models. The repair in the wrong hands could no doubt cause some issues Im sure but the weld heat is minimal for a surface build up job vs repairing something thats broke or cracked and requires more heat for proper penetration. Dont doubt your repair method, your good to go.
 
SAB1 said:
While this isn't a technical post on the driveshaft issue, the hair on my neck stands up a bit when I see the "victim of Cat quality" referenced. This problem is darn widespread dating back a few years now. Yamaha has their name on the Sidewinder not CAT and has done nothing to fix the issue. It's about "Yamaha quality" at this point. Mindboggling they want us to spend $17K on a sled with a fairly major issue and they don't fix it.
Click to expand...
see post #17 of this thread
 
DMCTurbo said:
Spoke to the machinist, he said its low carbon steel and it welded up easy. If it was a higher carbon steel he would have concerns with the heat.
Click to expand...

That’s funny and sad all at the same time, people are so full of $hit these days it’s unbelievable.

There’s no way it’s low carbon steel, definitely an alloy steel with splines for Both the caliper and the driven gears. If the shaft were low carbon steel the splines wouldn’t hold up very long. I know for a fact there is a bit of heat treatment on the shaft. When I had mine on the bench I took the liberty to file some of the sharp edges off the splines. There’s definitely a bit of hardness in the shaft, which is unobtainable with low carbon steel.
 
ClutchMaster said:
That’s funny and sad all at the same time, people are so full of $hit these days it’s unbelievable.

There’s no way it’s low carbon steel, definitely an alloy steel with splines for Both the caliper and the driven gears. If the shaft were low carbon steel the splines wouldn’t hold up very long. I know for a fact there is a bit of heat treatment on the shaft. When I had mine on the bench I took the liberty to file some of the sharp edges off the splines. There’s definitely a bit of hardness in the shaft, which is unobtainable with low carbon steel.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I can't speak about this as it's not my area of expertise.

I will post pics once I get it back.
 
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