Barley Crusher Adjustments

I've had my BC for years now and it's never failed me. I never changed the settings on it as it seemed to give me a good crush. This year I decided to tighten the gap a bit to see if I could get a better utilization. First two crushes seemed to work great and I got a 10 pt increase in efficiency. Then everything dropped and my efficiency got WORSE than what I had normally. A few days ago I decided to do some testing and realized when I put grain in the crush, one side of the adjustable knobs slowly moved back to the factory setting WHILE I was crushing the barley. Ah, so there is the problem.

And now? Anyone have a way to fix this? When I did a search for this, I came up with a bunch of posts about customer service, etc. Yikes! Boy, I hope there is an easy fix for this. Thanks for any help!

may be a dumb question but did you retighten the set screws after adjusting?

Ditto. The screws don't just hold the side plate on, they actually hold the gap adjusting eccentrics in position. If you don't tighten those screws enough, the "cams" just back out and you end up with a wider gap.

If you haven't done it already, you might want to take the whole grinder assembly apart and clean and lube the bushings. I've found it's good to do this every 100 lbs or so to keep things operating smoothly and prolong the life of the bushings.

Oh, no I didn't tighten those set screws. In fact, I didn't know they were set screws, because they look to be in fully and holding the side plate. I will do this and try again to see what happens. Thanks for this information. Also, yes, a good idea to give it a good cleanup too.

what do you grease the bushings with?

I just used a dab of keg lube. It's probably less than ideal as a lubricant, but it's food safe and viscous enough to stay in place for a decent amount of time. I also ended up putting a nylon washer over one end of each roller to close the gap on the side, just to try to take up some of the side-to-side play and help keep grist flour from getting into the bushings.

WRT the screws, I'm going from memory so while I *think* they are the same screws that go through the plate, I may be mistaken. At any rate, there is definitely a set screw for each of the knurled eccentrics and without tightening those screws, the gap will do whatever it wants.

SixFoFalcon said:

[...]WRT the screws, I'm going from memory so while I *think* they are the same screws that go through the plate, I may be mistaken. At any rate, there is definitely a set screw for each of the knurled eccentrics and without tightening those screws, the gap will do whatever it wants.

Click to expand...

Your memory is just fine On a stock BC, the screws holding the plate sans label are the ones that lock the bearing eccentrics...

Cheers!