Purchased a bunch of Huskies

[lehman live edge slab]

In my opinion, some of the faults on the 5xx series are downright assembly errors at the factory.
Some of the crank bearing failures are due to leaner mixture.
I've said it before, when Husqvarna makes service tools for cold pressing crank bearings, it's hardly better maintained at the factory production...

Nylon bearings were used on the 346 as well, and there were significantly fewer PTO bearing failures on that series compared to the 550.
And doesn't Stihl also use nylon bearings now and then?

Pretty much all nylon cage included a large number of the 440/460 bearings.

 

[Rich Fife]

I wonder how ethanol effects the nylon cage...

 

[mainer_in_ak]

I'm almost certain they are OEM 044 bearings that are steel caged... I'll have to look at my order form and check my bearing bin.

Nice! One of the most beat up 044's ive see up here in interior Alaska, is still on its original steel-caged crank bearings. The guy has fed 3 wood stoves in a 10,000 square foot log home, with that 044, since it was new.

Anyhow, cracks me up the claims against steel caged bearings. All my fleet of saws new and old are set up for 6202 or 6203 bearings. In the past 3 years I've worn out 2 crank bearings in high hour saws. Here's exactly what happened:

One crank bearing on a cs 530, I could hear a slight rattle. Kept running it. Eventually the crank seal went out and the saw wouldn't hold a tune. Pretty boring crank bearing replacement. Nothing was damaged.

In my cs 8000, it has spun a bearing. The vibrations have increased, and it begins to run away when warm, into the 14k rpm territory, then i fiddle with the high jet. The vibrations are actually severe enough to trip the chain brake. But no rattles or noises. Time to tear it down and split the cases. Another boring, worn out bearing failure.

 

[Ketchup]

If you wouldn't mind. Base width and length, the alignment pins and the bolt pattern center to center.

The ones I have are steel caged...

I think I'd have to clearance the case because the large end of the rod would hit... (I think).

550 / 562
Hole pattern
FW-PTO, Intake side 53mm / 57mm
Exhaust 42mm / 45mm
Intake to Exhaust 37mm / 38mm

Base width. 63.83mm / 67mm
Base length. 81.84mm / 79.5mm

Locate pins OC. 35.5mm / 37mm

All holes measured on center. I just eyeballed it, so I could be off 0.5mm.

Edit: The 550 jug has a 49mm base flange. Enough room for the 562 flange to be thinned and drop in.

 

[lehman live edge slab]

Nice! One of the most beat up 044's ive see up here in interior Alaska, is still on its original crank bearings. The guy has fed 3 wood stoves in a 10,000 square foot log home, with that 044, since it was new.

Anyhow, cracks me up the claims against steel caged bearings. All my fleet of saws new and old are set up for 6202 or 6203 bearings. In the past 3 years I've worn out 2 crank bearings in high hour saws. Here's exactly what happened:

One crank bearing on a cs 530, I could hear a slight rattle. Kept running it. Eventually the crank seal went out and the saw wouldn't hold a tune. Pretty boring crank bearing replacement. Nothing was damaged.

In my cs 8000, it has spun a bearing. The vibrations have increased, and it begins to run away when warm, into the 14k rpm territory, then i fiddle with the high jet. The vibrations are actually severe enough to trip the chain brake. But no rattles or noises. Time to tear it down and split the cases. Another boring, worn out bearing failure.

Good thing most of the 044/046 bearings have nylon cages. They all go but if a metal cage one actually let’s go more often then not it’s a top end too. You know so much I think you need to get a job at skf.

 

[SimonHS]

550 / 562
Hole pattern
FW-PTO, Intake side 53mm / 57mm
Exhaust 42mm / 45mm
Intake to Exhaust 37mm / 38mm

Base width. 63.83mm / 67mm
Base length. 81.84mm / 79.5mm

Locate pins OC. 35.5mm / 37mm

All holes measured on center. I just eyeballed it, so I could be off 0.5mm. View attachment 450129

Edit: The 550 jug has a 49mm base flange. Enough room for the 562 flange to be thinned and drop in.

Yay for millimetres! I thought that all Americans used inches? I'm an old fart that learned both systems at school. I use mm when I feel like it and inches when I feel like it. Sometimes both sets of units on the same sketch drawing.

 

[Rich Fife]

550 / 562
Hole pattern
FW-PTO, Intake side 53mm / 57mm
Exhaust 42mm / 45mm
Intake to Exhaust 37mm / 38mm

Base width. 63.83mm / 67mm
Base length. 81.84mm / 79.5mm

Locate pins OC. 35.5mm / 37mm

All holes measured on center. I just eyeballed it, so I could be off 0.5mm. View attachment 450129

Edit: The 550 jug has a 49mm base flange. Enough room for the 562 flange to be thinned and drop in.

Above and Beyond! Thank You!

 

[Rich Fife]

Good thing most of the 044/046 bearings have nylon cages. They all go but if a metal cage one actually let’s go more often then not it’s a top end too. You know so much I think you need to get a job at skf.

I've seen many saws where the nylon cage failed and the bearings destroyed the case dancing with the crank as well as playing wack a mole with the top end making it look like the moon with the countless craters...

I prefer steel caged bearings... nylons work and have for a while now... and I do agree that when a steel cage fails... its typically catastrophic in a couple areas... with thay said, ive seen more failures with nylon caged bearings. My friends are loggers, their friends and families are loggers, the have residential tree service companies, disaster clean up companies... etc. Ive seen and worked on a lot of saws with bearing failures...
I think profit over quality is the route most companies took... as nylon was faster, easier and Cheaper in-order to produce a satisfactory product.
We all dont have to agree on what bearings are better... I think nowadays it comes down to what's available that is suitable for the builder and user... and whats most readily available are the nylon caged bearings...
with that said, I'm always hunting for steel caged bearings... Lmao

 

[lehman live edge slab]

I’ve seen quite a few saws inside and yes I’ve also seen ones desroyed by nylon caged bearings if the balls find their way out. Far as cost I don’t see any real difference in cost between metal and nylon caged bearings. The bearing manufacturers can make and will sell the company anything they want, Stihl even used some shielded bearings for awhile but I don’t know why. Nylon caged bearings are actually designed to be better at extreme cold and also have less internal resistance than steel. But your correct in the everyone will have their own opinions and buy what they deem the best no matter what came in the saw. Only reason i even mentioned the oem bearings is if your just selling it an all oem saw is an easier sell and also easier to prove it was nothing you did if it had a failure. Wasn’t even about the cage material in this case just oem vs modified on a saw you just plan to sell anyway.

 

[Tor R]

Good discussion though.
Nylon & improved material, has been used on chainsaws for almost 20 years.
And, almost the entire 5xx series has nylon bearings (maybe not the Japanese 543 and the new 540).
And where you find metal bearings is on the 4xx series.
So why has Husqvarna chosen nylon bearings on the professional series, while they use metal bearings on hobby saws, if they are so much worse?

 

[Ketchup]

I will second that Nylon Vs Metal race does not matter much when bearings fail. You might get luckier with nylon, but just one ding in the transfer or exhaust roof and you’re pooched anyway. I’ve heard people say Nylon is designed to fail outward but I haven’t seen evidence of that working.

550mk1 is no great prize, but I like them ported. I’d build it all OEM and port it up nice if I was going to sell it. They’re good limbers and they sound mean. They do vapor lock pretty badly, so a little extra work should be done to vent the cylinder and insulate the carb box. I even added a small heat sink to a carb on one.

But it would be much more appealing as a 562 sleeper. Probably going to take a lot of parts, some tight machining and patience but it would make an excellent climbing/crane removal saw.

MK2 might be a better platform for that. Slightly bigger case and carb box.

 

[Tor R]

Add that Autotune will compensate for minor leaks, and will probably keep a chainsaw running longer when a bearing starts to fail compared to a carburetor model.

 

[srcarr52]

I will second that Nylon Vs Metal race does not matter much when bearings fail. You might get luckier with nylon, but just one ding in the transfer or exhaust roof and you’re pooched anyway. I’ve heard people say Nylon is designed to fail outward but I haven’t seen evidence of that working.

550mk1 is no great prize, but I like them ported. I’d build it all OEM and port it up nice if I was going to sell it. They’re good limbers and they sound mean. They do vapor lock pretty badly, so a little extra work should be done to vent the cylinder and insulate the carb box. I even added a small heat sink to a carb on one.

But it would be much more appealing as a 562 sleeper. Probably going to take a lot of parts, some tight machining and patience but it would make an excellent climbing/crane removal saw.

MK2 might be a better platform for that. Slightly bigger case and carb box.

562 MK1's can be pretty peppy but they do like to eat crank bearings.

 

[Tor R]

v1 had too weak a flywheel bearing, is a good reason why Husqvarna modified v1 at the end to have the same pto bearing on both sides with 560 & 562.

But in my book, I thought there was too much sloppiness during production for me to recommend them. But there are those who are lucky and got a lot out of them, and those who had warranty issues after a few hours of use.

 

[mainer_in_ak]

Rich,
You might have a good side-gig thing going if this works. It seems some husq shops just simply short block em. I'd imagine there's a ton of discarded, rattle-trap shortblocks that you could provide this modification for, as an alternative to waiting on the husq back-order or warranty madness.

On the 5 series specifically, if somebody thinks the nylon cages are holding up to the excessive heat and lean lean auto-tune, ignorance is bliss.

100 hrs is the magic number.

 

[lehman live edge slab]

Rich,
You might have a good side-gig thing going if this works. It seems some husq shops just simply short block em. I'd imagine there's a ton of discarded, rattle-trap shortblocks that you could provide this modification for, as an alternative to waiting on the husq back-order or warranty madness.

On the 5 series specifically, if somebody thinks the nylon cages are holding up to the excessive heat and lean lean auto-tune, ignorance is bliss.

100 hrs is the magic number.

Piss poor design on a saw isn’t the bearings fault, for as much as you hate people bashing echo you sure run your mouth a lot about everything else. These problems are partially due to the stratto design which echo hasn’t had to do yet because they don’t sell enough saws where they need to be clean to that point. Makes no difference what cage material a bearing has still needs lube. Throw nylon cage bearings in an echo they’d last a long time this is all way more about the saw design than bearing.

 

[mainer_in_ak]

Piss poor design on a saw isn’t the bearings fault, for as much as you hate people bashing echo you sure run your mouth a lot about everything else. These problems are partially due to the stratto design which echo hasn’t had to do yet because they don’t sell enough saws where they need to be clean to that point. Makes no difference what cage material a bearing has still needs lube. Throw nylon cage bearings in an echo they’d last a long time this is all way more about the saw design than bearing.

Hate is a powerful word that just isnt in my vocabulary. I don't hate anybody. So please try not to speak on my behalf. I don't even know why I'm continually having to respond to you?

Rich got a good idea and i hope it works out. He's a doer.
You should try that out sometime.

OK, back to running saws.

 

[Tor R]

Rich,
You might have a good side-gig thing going if this works. It seems some husq shops just simply short block em. I'd imagine there's a ton of discarded, rattle-trap shortblocks that you could provide this modification for, as an alternative to waiting on the husq back-order or warranty madness.

On the 5 series specifically, if somebody thinks the nylon cages are holding up to the excessive heat and lean lean auto-tune, ignorance is bliss.

100 hrs is the magic number.

Not really strange why workshops use short blocks, just look at the price for what they get with short blocks, workshop price, elementary 1-2-3 economy.

Incidentally, the throw and use of the bottom part is good news for me who likes to build from scratch!…….with nylon bearings!

 

[lehman live edge slab]

Hate is a powerful word that just isnt in my vocabulary. I don't hate anybody. So please try not to speak on my behalf. I don't even know why I'm continually having to respond to you?

Rich got a good idea and i hope it works out. He's a doer.
You should try that out sometime.

OK, back to running saws.

Ok you dislike when people bash echo that better? This after all is why you left the other site remember? And yes you constantly bash Stihl and husky but cry foul is someone bashes echo. You claim your birch trees are something else when I asked to compare it to paper birch but it’s not,I’ve fixed and ran saws, milled and everything else and you have no idea what I have for saw experience but seem to think you do. Like I said before I thought about dealing echo but would be to hard to sell here. Your response was how could I sell them I know nothing about the nor am I smart enough to fix one, but your also wrong on that account. So guess one way to find out if steel cages fix everything is this saw new steel cage bearings sent to a tree service or logger mixed 50:1 husky oil and ran till failure to see how many hours it makes it. Find it real hard to believe husky isn’t smart enough to change the cage material on a bearing to make a saw live if that’s all it takes but maybe you are smarter than all the engineers at husky and Stihl combined.

 

[lehman live edge slab]

I've seen many saws where the nylon cage failed and the bearings destroyed the case dancing with the crank as well as playing wack a mole with the top end making it look like the moon with the countless craters...

I prefer steel caged bearings... nylons work and have for a while now... and I do agree that when a steel cage fails... its typically catastrophic in a couple areas... with thay said, ive seen more failures with nylon caged bearings. My friends are loggers, their friends and families are loggers, the have residential tree service companies, disaster clean up companies... etc. Ive seen and worked on a lot of saws with bearing failures...
I think profit over quality is the route most companies took... as nylon was faster, easier and Cheaper in-order to produce a satisfactory product.
We all dont have to agree on what bearings are better... I think nowadays it comes down to what's available that is suitable for the builder and user... and whats most readily available are the nylon caged bearings...
with that said, I'm always hunting for steel caged bearings... Lmao

I will never say you don’t do some pretty odd stuff and make it work I do respect your abilities. I’d like to try some different things just not the time or money at moment with 3 teens in the house. I hope the saw holds up well and who knows maybe this will fix it.