Jon,

Maybe you could help me out here. Do you have a lot of trouble with these bearings yourself? Two years ago we traded off our high acre 1850 that we had owned since it was new in 1997....actually we traded off two with pretty much the same amount of acres, but one was my uncle's and he didn't own it in the first 3 years of its life. We never had much trouble with these bearings. We used a good cleaner, and a press to put them together. We maybe lost one or two a year. Always kept a spare replacement on hand so the drill could keep going while fixing the other. Neighbors around us were having lots of trouble and still are today with their 50 series drills. Then again, I hear stories of them assembling the wheels on the tailgates of their pickups with hammres.

Would storing them inside have helped? Ours ware always stored inside in the winter...then again, another guy that stores his in the same shed eventually bought the 90 series arms. Our problem was with the bushings that mounted the closing wheel arms to the units. They were wore out, and would fill up with dirt. Then they would hang up and have any pressure or even touch the ground. The only way to fix them was to pull the bushings. We made a puller and destroyed an air wrench one spring pulling 15-20 of them.

BTW, we wish we would have kept ours.