Crank brg retainers

Call up Toby at Moto-Xperts 765.230.0514

He used to have a page on his website talking about how the retainers were set from the factory in the wrong position. (cocked off to one side) Causing a piece to snap off of the retainer and wreaking havoc in the engine. I dont know if he has a fix for this or not, but on the old page I remember he shows you how to position them flush to the bearing and not have them cause any problems.

If you were really worried about them snapping, look into some kind of metal treatment for them. Cryo comes to mind right now, but I am sure there are a lot more options.

Just talked to Toby. Very smart guy. Basically when the factory torques down those retainer bolts to 12 ft lbs they just torque them down and leave them and a lot of times while torquing those bolts down, the tab gets cocked to one side making uneven contact with the bearing creating many low-hour engine failures. Adding any performance engine parts increases this failure rate due to the extra force being exerted on the crankshaft and that force being transfered into the bearings/bearing retainers/cases and finally breaking off the corner off of an incorrectly set bearing retainer tab.


The CORRECT way to torque down these bolts is to hold the retainer FLUSH with the bearing (using a screw driver or pliers) while torquing to 12 ft lbs. (with red lock tite)

When I took my engine apart my retainers were sideways. It had nothing to do with my engine blowing but I fixed it when I put it back together.

One thing to be careful of if you put bigger bolts in is to make sure they are no longer. I heard someone did this and the crank ended up hitting the tip of the bolt and destroyed the engine.