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We recently had increased temperature levels on this pump. We had some other issues with the plant at the same time and so we took one of our turbines off line to perform some work. Supposed to be 7 days. This bearing temperature issue was one of the tasks to be repaired. Our maintenance department does not have a lot of experience with sleeve bearings to start the explanation. I'm the reliability engineer for the site doing vibration, thermography, oil analysis, and alignment support (w/Maintenance). My recommendations were to perform a hot alignment check, verify adequate oil flow and check bearing contact pattern. Previous to working for this company I worked for one of the premiere apparatus repair facilities in the Midwest. For close to ten years I had the opportunity to perform thousands of alignments on equipment from 10 hp motors and pumps to large steam turbine generators. Along the way several motor installations and repairs including a majority of sleeve bearing application.
Our procedures for sleeve bearing installation were as follows:
1: Clean everything, shaft, bearings, seal surface and make sure everything was smooth, no nicks or burrs.
2: pour a small amount of oil on the top of the shaft, set the lower bearing half on and roll into place (off coarse the shaft would be lifted for enough clearance).
3: Bolt the upper bearing half together and then install the top bearing cap, end bell, or whatever to complete the bearing installation. 4: Rotate the shaft by hand to gain enough inertia to allow the rotor to rotate on its own a few turns.
5: Disassemble the bearing and inspect for the contact pattern on the lower shaft. Use the "scraping" method to gain contact pattern.
6: Reassemble and repeat this process until 80% contact was achieved.

Ok this all sound good and all but with out all your feedback and suggestion I cant convince our Maintenance Manager to perform the scraping (due the vendor telling him it wasn't "necessary because nobody scrapes bearings anymore") if for nothing at all but to rule it out as a possible source of the heating. After talking to the vendor rep, actually two of them neither one of them understood what scraping actually was.
Oh and by the way we install a new bearing, aligned, verifies oil flow and never did the contact pattern per vendor recommendation. Needless to say we started up and still have the hign bearing temperatures but it did change -2.5 degrees.

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First of all I would like to thank everyone for their comments and suggestion. Here's my story for asking so many questions.We recently had increased temperature levels on this pump. We had some other issues with the plant at the same time and so we took one of our turbines off line to perform some work. Supposed to be 7 days. This bearing temperature issue was one of the tasks to be repaired. Our maintenance department does not have a lot of experience with sleeve bearings to start the explanation. I'm the reliability engineer for the site doing vibration, thermography, oil analysis, and alignment support (w/Maintenance). My recommendations were to perform a hot alignment check, verify adequate oil flow and check bearing contact pattern. Previous to working for this company I worked for one of the premiere apparatus repair facilities in the Midwest. For close to ten years I had the opportunity to perform thousands of alignments on equipment from 10 hp motors and pumps to large steam turbine generators. Along the way several motor installations and repairs including a majority of sleeve bearing application.Our procedures for sleeve bearing installation were as follows:1: Clean everything, shaft, bearings, seal surface and make sure everything was smooth, no nicks or burrs.2: pour a small amount of oil on the top of the shaft, set the lower bearing half on and roll into place (off coarse the shaft would be lifted for enough clearance).3: Bolt the upper bearing half together and then install the top bearing cap, end bell, or whatever to complete the bearing installation. 4: Rotate the shaft by hand to gain enough inertia to allow the rotor to rotate on its own a few turns.5: Disassemble the bearing and inspect for the contact pattern on the lower shaft. Use the "scraping" method to gain contact pattern.6: Reassemble and repeat this process until 80% contact was achieved.Ok this all sound good and all but with out all your feedback and suggestion I cant convince our Maintenance Manager to perform the scraping (due the vendor telling him it wasn't "necessary because nobody scrapes bearings anymore") if for nothing at all but to rule it out as a possible source of the heating. After talking to the vendor rep, actually two of them neither one of them understood what scraping actually was.Oh and by the way we install a new bearing, aligned, verifies oil flow and never did the contact pattern per vendor recommendation. Needless to say we started up and still have the hign bearing temperatures but it did change -2.5 degrees.

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