Oil/brass bushing as a clutch bearing?

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tudordewolf

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I've got an engine, pilot shaft, and clutch bell all from different manufacturers, and I'm trying to Frankenstein them together.

Kyosho, in all their wisdom, often uses "custom" clutch bearing sizes instead of the relatively standard 5x10x4mm "105"'s we all know and love.

As a result, I'm trying to mate a clutch bell with 10mm bearing sockets to a pilot shaft that has a 5mm and an 8mm outer diameter. A standard bearing will work in the front, but that leaves me with an 8x10x4mm space to support.

My plan is to drill out a 5x10mm brass bushing to 8x10mm and use it as the rear bearing between the clutch bell and pilot shaft, because there's no 8x10mm ball bearings. (Understandably, they'd have to be only a millimeter thick between diameters)

Would a bushing wear away too quickly to be useful? It would be relatively protected from contamination, and they seem to last a pretty long time in the wheel hubs, where they're exposed to more of erratic lateral forces and RPM's similar to that of the clutch. It wouldn't have to handle more than 10,000 RPMs, because by then the clutch would engage and spin as a single unit.

On the downside, any wear to the bushing will result in loss of gear mesh. It'd be pretty easy to check by just feeling the clutch bell with my fingers between runs, though.

I could just buy more parts or another engine, but what's the fun in that?
 
I've got an engine, pilot shaft, and clutch bell all from different manufacturers, and I'm trying to Frankenstein them together.

Kyosho, in all their wisdom, often uses "custom" clutch bearing sizes instead of the relatively standard 5x10x4mm "105"'s we all know and love.

As a result, I'm trying to mate a clutch bell with 10mm bearing sockets to a pilot shaft that has a 5mm and an 8mm outer diameter. A standard bearing will work in the front, but that leaves me with an 8x10x4mm space to support.

My plan is to drill out a 5x10mm brass bushing to 8x10mm and use it as the rear bearing between the clutch bell and pilot shaft, because there's no 8x10mm ball bearings. (Understandably, they'd have to be only a millimeter thick between diameters)

Would a bushing wear away too quickly to be useful? It would be relatively protected from contamination, and they seem to last a pretty long time in the wheel hubs, where they're exposed to more of erratic lateral forces and RPM's similar to that of the clutch. It wouldn't have to handle more than 10,000 RPMs, because by then the clutch would engage and spin as a single unit.

On the downside, any wear to the bushing will result in loss of gear mesh. It'd be pretty easy to check by just feeling the clutch bell with my fingers between runs, though.

I could just buy more parts or another engine, but what's the fun in that?
I know this is an old question.. and you've probably sorted it.. but this is the kind of problem I had trying to get new fangled clutches to fit an old 1/4 shaft on an OS 50.. I used oil/bronze bearing, drilled out and made to fit.
They do wear out, but are as cheap as anything and do work.
 
I know this is an old question.. and you've probably sorted it.. but this is the kind of problem I had trying to get new fangled clutches to fit an old 1/4 shaft on an OS 50.. I used oil/bronze bearing, drilled out and made to fit.
They do wear out, but are as cheap as anything and do work.

Fair enough, I prototyped a bored-out bushing but didn't quite get it concentric. Maybe with further effort I could have, but I wound up going in another direction that let me avoid the issue entirely.
 

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