Cutterhead bearing seized on me mid-shift yesterday

Working the Atchafalaya River dredge and heard a grinding noise around 3pm. Shut everything down fast. Found the port side cutterhead bearing was completely shot. No grease getting to it for god knows how long. Cost us 4 hours to swap it out with a spare. Anyone else deal with bearing failures on older cutter suction dredges?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_palmer441mo ago

Honestly, is it really that big of a deal? I mean, four hours to swap a bearing sounds like a pretty standard fix to me. You caught it before it blew up and wrecked the whole cutterhead, so that's a win in my book. Stuff breaks on old dredges all the time, that's just the game. Sure it's annoying but it's not like the river was gonna wash away in that time. Ngl sometimes people act like a seized bearing is the end of the world when really it's just another Tuesday on the water.

henryp401mo ago

Yeah I used to get all worked up about this stuff too but you're right, it's just part of the job.

the_taylor1mo ago

Four hours to swap a bearing." Damn, that's actually pretty fast for an old dredge.