I've got a nice little Rikon 14" bandsaw - the 10-325 - about a dozen years old. It's a nice saw, for a mid-range import (I think I paid $800 for it new), and has served me well. It runs incredibly quietly, when properly tuned. But it's been getting noisier over time, and the other day the offending drive wheel bearing, as I now know to be the problem, seized and broke a blade with a bang. I decided to replace both top and bottom wheel bearings since I had to take the saw apart anyway. The wheels, as it turns out are on two standard sealed bearings each. I removed the bearings from the bottom wheel, and found that one of the bearings has no seal on the inner side of the race, and a gap between the bearings. Ouch on the seal, right? Then I took the bearings out of the top wheel and discovered that there is a 7mm bushing between the two bearings. Looked it up in the parts book and sure enough, there is supposed to be a bushing on both wheels.
So, this saw was assembled with a bad bearing (no way for a seal to get out of where this one was missing, and there were no seal remnants there), and no bushing. The bearing was bound to fail in an environment as dirty as the bottom cabinet of a bandsaw. I'm surprised it ran for a dozen years. The consequences of the missing bushing? I'm not certain there were any, as both bearings were in their proper position when I removed them. But this saw has always had a strange quirk that when you put a blade on it, even an identical one to the one you've just removed, the blade would on occasion track WAY off the center of the upper tire, to the point of running off the back of the wheel. You'd have to push the wheel tracking camber to it's very limit to get it to track, and then at some point, it'd flop over to the other side, I'd have to adjust the camber to something more normal, and it'd run that way until the next blade change. This annoyed me, but I could never figure out what caused it, and the saw ran fine in either adjustment. Was the bottom wheel moving on bearings that weren't held in the proper spacing on the shaft, and I was not seeing it? I guess time will tell. I made a proper bushing, and reassembled the saw with 4 good bearings and 2 good bushings, so if the problem goes away, I guess that's a puzzle solved.
But sheesh - a bad bearing and a missing part, that's really bad quality control at the factory.
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