[markat425]

I wish I would have thought to take pictures of this, but I'll try to explain it anyway.
Yesterday I was installing a new lower clean grain auger in my 6620. The bearings weren't out, but I put in new ones anyway. As I was removing the old bearings, by knocking the seal out and torching the balls, I noticed something I thought was odd. The bearing didn't have the balls all the way around the inside. This wasn't a "caged" type ball bearing. When looking at the bearing from about the 12:00 to the 4:00 position it didn't have any balls. I don't recall ever seeing this before. These bearings had the Deere part # on them.

 

[ccjersey]

The cage would be gone and the balls not distributed evenly any longer.

I have removed ball bearings in a lobe type blower/vacuum pump which runs maybe 2500 rpm which simply had some balls missing. The pump was still running, making some noise which was increasing rapidly. I was dumbfounded to see that it could run without about a third of the normal complement of balls. The other question is where did they go without destroying something in the process. I guess they just wore away to nothing.