Does anyone run without the spigot/pilot bearing ?

Dramas/Issues/Problems...

 

Don`t think I would want to. Had an older 1st gen that I lost a pilot bearing in once. It came apart. Pretty soon, the tranny was hard to shift gears in & I started getting vibrations in the drivetrain. Pulled the tranny off to discover all of the needle bearings laying in the tranny housing. The front bearings in the tranny also went. Had another used transmission laying around so just put it in instead of fixing the bad one.

 

Never tried eliminating the pilot bearing. Why would you want to though?

 

I have one installed and I wonder if no bearing tends to make the clutch chatter more or something. But I've heard it runs fine without it. This is coming from some pretty big-name Rx-7 shops here in the states, not some random person.

 

Mine ran for years without one....it broke up and fell out one day. That being said, I would not intentionally run without one, IMO the clutch operates smoother with the pilot bearing.

 

The pilot bearing is there to keep the end of the input shaft balanced and supported. That shaft is only about 7 inches long, maybe 8. and it has about 5-6 of it sticking straight out with no support on the end if you have no pilot bearing. would you want to run any shaft like that at 8k rpm? a single roller bearing, only supporting one end?