Well, when I had my shortblock torn apart, the machinist showed me something quite scary. My crank, in two spots, had "casting blemishes" - essentially, two 0.5cm - 0.9cm divets/recessions in the crank. Suprisingly, the old bearings were just fine for their age (200,000+ miles). As well, with a .010 grind on the crank, it cleaned up nicely leaving me two "oil retention grooves."

Anyone else have this sort of casting blemish?

-Patrick

 

Patrick, yeah, there are lots of cast cranks that have some of those blemishes on them. I've seen a bunch of cranks like that working at my buddies machine shop. Interestingly enough, the forged cranks don't have those marks. If I find a blemish in the casting, I always ask the boss what he thinks....he has almost always said run it. And we have never had a failure on any of them. Cranks are pretty tough. DF