Reference: Bearings used in a Ford CMP

[Jacques Reed]

Hi Bob,

Yes, sadly that plug may have caused you to miss out of a few!

Of interest, and bearing related also, is the balls in the Rzeppa CV joint.

I have disassembled, cleaned, inspected, and repacked a few of them and never cease to be amazed at the beautiful machining of all the parts. Must have cost a small fortune even in WW2 to manufacture them.

The balls usually have some slight pitting in them but for the amount of work they do are serviceable for a hobby vehicle.

In case I ever wanted to replace them however, I measured them with my micrometer as 0.984”. That equates to 63/64". I thought that was a strange size- Why not make them 1" exactly assuming they were made to Imperial sizes.

Out of curiosity, I then converted 0.984" to millimetres and they are exactly 24.994 mm. (25.0 mm)

I remember someone on MLU mentioned that sometimes Imperial size bearings used Metric size balls. Looks like the case here.

Shown is a NOS one I cleaned of 80 years of preservative and repacked. An engineering work of art!

Hope this is of some interest.