DODGES2212ETwo-Bolt Pillow Block Spherical Roller Bearing Unit, Expansion Type, Cast Iron Housing, Relubricatable

Product Description

What this part is

A Dodge two-bolt cast iron pillow block fitted with a double-row spherical roller bearing insert, expansion type. It bolts down onto a horizontal base or bearing pedestal and carries a rotating shaft in a self-aligning spherical roller element. The carton is the original Dodge / Reliance Electric — Master — Reeves box, marked SIZE S2212E PIL BLK and STK# 042776, with the internal Dodge print number 1736060-096. The unit is bagged, unused, with the Dodge spherical roller bearing instruction sheet still in the carton.

Correcting the source data

The previous listing described this as a flange mount bearing. It is not. It is a two-bolt pillow block, and the correction matters more than most.

A pillow block and a flange unit are not alternatives to one another — they mount on perpendicular surfaces. A pillow block bolts down onto a horizontal base or pedestal, with the shaft running parallel to that surface. A flange unit bolts flat against a vertical face — a gearbox wall, a housing plate, the side of a frame — with the shaft passing through it. A buyer who needs to bolt to a vertical face and receives a base-mount unit has nothing they can install: there is no flange to bolt through, the bolt pattern does not exist, and the shaft comes out at ninety degrees to where it is wanted. That is an automatic return, not a near miss.

Two independent confirmations put this beyond doubt. Dodge’s own carton label reads PIL BLK — pillow block, in Dodge’s own abbreviation, printed at the factory. And Dodge’s published nomenclature for this family is unambiguous about housing prefixes: P2B is a two-bolt-base cast iron pillow block and P4B a four-bolt-base pillow block, while flange housings carry entirely different prefixes — F4S for a four-bolt square flange, F4R and F3R for round four- and three-bolt flanges, and FC for a piloted flanged cartridge. Nothing in this designation is a flange prefix.

The old copy also called this a ball-type industrial bearing by implication. The insert is a double-row spherical roller bearing, which is a different and considerably heavier-duty element. The instruction sheet packed in the carton is Dodge’s spherical roller bearing manual.

Finally, the designation P2B-E-234 travelled with the old listing. It is not a valid Dodge part number and it has been removed from the title. Dodge bore codes in this family are inches and sixteenths — 204 is 2-1/4 in, 207 is 2-7/16 in, 212 is 2-3/4 in — so a code of 234 would have to mean thirty-four sixteenths of an inch beyond two inches, which is not a thing. It is retained only as a cross-reference so that anyone who saw the earlier listing can still find this page.

Decoding the designation

S — Dodge’s spherical roller mounted bearing line. In Dodge’s current catalogue the same family is designated S2 for S-20002212 — the double-row spherical roller insert size. Dodge lists its S-2000 units against insert numbers in exactly this series — 22208, 22209, 22210, 22211, 22213, 22215, 22218, 22220, 22222 — so 2212 reads as the 22212 insert rather than as a housing bore codeE — Expansion. Dodge publishes this suffix explicitly: “E = Expansion Type Bearing – If E Does Not Appear, Bearing Is Non Expansion Type.” Non-expansion is what Dodge ships unless expansion is specified, so the E here is a deliberate order option, not decoration

Expansion versus non-expansion — get this wrong and both bearings die:
This is the single most important thing on the page, and it is the reason the E suffix is in the title.

An expansion bearing does not locate the shaft axially. The outer ring is free to creep in the housing bore by a designed amount, so the shaft can grow and shrink lengthwise through the bearing as it heats and cools. A non-expansion bearing does the opposite: it fixes the shaft’s axial position and takes thrust.

On any shaft carried in two or more mounted units, exactly one bearing should locate and every other one should float. Fit two non-expansion bearings on the same shaft and thermal growth has nowhere to go — the shaft pushes the two outer rings apart, internal clearance is consumed, contact stress climbs, the grease cooks, and one of the two fails. Fit two expansion bearings and nothing controls the shaft’s axial position at all: the whole assembly wanders, couplings and sheaves run out of alignment, seals wear on one side.

So this unit is the floating position on the shaft, not the locating one. If you need the locating bearing, you need the non-expansion version of the same size. Worth knowing: Dodge states this family is field convertible between non-expansion and expansion in both directions, and publishes expansion capability of up to 3/8 in (9.5 mm) across the line, so the two configurations are not necessarily a dead end.

Why a spherical roller and not a ball insert:
A double-row spherical roller insert is what you specify when the load is heavy and the shaft will not stay perfectly straight. Rollers give a line contact rather than a ball’s point contact, so radial capacity for a given envelope is far higher, and the spherical outer raceway lets the two roller rows swivel to follow shaft deflection or a bearing seat that is not quite in line with its neighbour.

Dodge publishes up to 1° of misalignment capability for this line, with the seal land on the outer diameter of the inner ring maintaining full contact pressure even when misaligned — which is the part people forget. A self-aligning bearing that loses its seal when it aligns has not solved anything. This construction keeps the seal working through the swivel.

The practical consequence is that spherical roller pillow blocks are the standard fit on long shafts and heavily loaded ones: conveyor head and tail pulleys, screw conveyors, bucket elevators, fans and blowers, crushers, kilns, aggregate and mining equipment, and paper and process machinery. They tolerate the shaft deflection and the sloppy pedestal machining that would kill a ball unit.

Published data

Housing style: two-bolt base pillow blockHousing material: cast ironInsert: double-row spherical roller, 22212 seriesExpansion type: expansion (floating) — outer ring free to move axially in the housingMisalignment capability: up to 1° (published for the family)Expansion capability: up to 3/8 in / 9.5 mm (published for the family)Field convertible between expansion and non-expansion: yes (published for the family)Lubrication: factory lubricated, sealed and adjusted; relubricatableGrease fitting: 1/8-27 NPT hydraulic fitting is standard across all sizes in this familyLocking to shaft: collar mountDodge stock / order number: 042776Dodge internal print number on carton: 1736060-096Country of manufacture: made in USA, per the carton

Dynamic and static load ratings, limiting speed, housing dimensions, base-to-bore centreline height, bolt centre-to-centre spacing and weight are deliberately left blank rather than filled from an adjacent size. Dodge’s current published S-2000 tables step straight from insert 22211 to insert 22213 and from bore code 203 to bore code 207 — there is no 22212 and no 212 entry in the current two-bolt inch table — so no published row corresponds exactly to this legacy unit. Borrowing the 22211 or 22213 figures would be inventing a specification, and load ratings are exactly the numbers an engineer sizes a machine against.

Bore size — read this before you order

The earlier listing stated a 2-3/4 in bore. That figure is not confirmed by anything on the carton or by Dodge’s published tables, and it should be treated as unverified.

Here is the difficulty, stated plainly. The Dodge label on this carton gives the size as S2212E and nothing else — unlike the shaft-size labels Dodge used on its Type E cartons, it does not print a bore in inches. Read as a Dodge bore code, 212 would indeed be 2-3/4 in. But read against Dodge’s own S-2000 tables, 2212 is the insert number, and insert numbers in this family do not track bore in sixteenths at all: insert 22213 carries a 2-7/16 in shaft and insert 22215 carries both 2-11/16 in and 2-15/16 in. On that reading the shaft size does not follow from the 2212 in any direct way.

We would rather say so than publish a bore we cannot stand behind. Ask before ordering and the bore will be measured off the unit in stock — there are two of them on the shelf and it is a two-minute job. If you tell us the shaft size you are fitting, we will confirm or rule this out before anything ships.

Fitting notes

The unit arrives factory lubricated, sealed and adjusted, ready to slip onto the shaft — no bearing setting is required. Support heavy loads through the base: a pillow block is designed to take load down through its feet, and where the load pulls the housing away from the base instead, the mounting bolts and the pedestal have to be strong enough for that uplift, and housing capacity has to be checked separately rather than assumed from the bearing rating.

The pedestal or base must be flat, in the same plane as the other bearing seats on the shaft, and rigid. Spherical roller units will absorb a degree of misalignment, and that latitude is there to cover shaft deflection under load, not to make up for a base that was never machined true. Grease through the 1/8-27 NPT fitting on the intervals your duty and speed call for; hot, fast or heavily loaded service wants a more frequent schedule and, in some cases, a high-temperature grease rather than the standard fill.

Interchange guidance

Cross-references and search forms: S2212E, S-2212-E, S2212-E, S 2212 E, 042776, 1736060-096, 22212, insert 22212. The current Dodge equivalents to compare against are the S-2000 two-bolt pillow blocks P2B-S2-xxxRE (TRIDENT triple-lip rubbing seal, expansion) and P2B-S2-xxxLE (labyrinth metallic seal, expansion), and the Type-E-dimensioned versions EP2B-S2-xxxRE and EP2B-S2-xxxLE, which put an S-2000 spherical insert into a housing that shares Type E bolt and centreline dimensions — useful when you are replacing a Type E unit in an existing base without re-drilling. Four-bolt equivalents are P4B-S2 and EP4B-S2. The invalid designation P2B-E-234 from the earlier listing is retained here purely so that search still reaches this page.

Obsolescence trail, because these part numbers outlive their owners: Dodge mounted bearings passed from Reliance Electric to Rockwell Automation, then to Baldor, then to ABB, and are now Dodge Industrial under RBC Bearings. The Dodge, Master and Reeves branding on this carton dates it to the Reliance Electric era. Regal Rexnord holds the neighbouring Link-Belt and Rexnord mounted bearing lines, which is why Dodge and Regal Rexnord are often confused in searches — they are separate companies, and this is a Dodge part.

Two of these are in stock, which is worth noting for a two-bearing shaft — though on a shaft with two mounted units only one should be an expansion bearing, so a pair of expansion units suits two separate floating positions rather than one shaft.