Nothing wrong with
this bearing (see below)!!!
I found out from Pentair that the new variable speed pump will work with my Intelli-Touch I5, but it "might" not work with my plumbing since it's 18 years old and they recommend that I have a professional come out and verify if it will or it won't.
In the meantime, yesterday the pump noise got even WORSE. So bad in fact that I thought it was going to explode, so I killed the power at the circuit breaker. This morning I pulled it apart using
THIS VIDEO and
THIS VIDEO as guides and when I pulled it apart, I found the front bearing COMPLETELY trashed (again, see below)!! The rear is perfectly fine, it was just the front. I'm surprised it ran at all!!
I went out to Auto Zone and got a National 203FF bearing for a little over $10 bucks but I also had to get a new o-ring for the "cone" (if that's what it's called) because the original was lying at the bottom of the housing and was all stretched out!
Also, as I took the long screws out of the motor to separate the front from the housing, two of them broke, but luckily for me they still had about 2" of thread still pertruding from the holes. So off to Hank's Hardware store in Temecula for two 8-32 coupling nuts and the o-ring. $3.26 later, I'm back at home assembling it together but somehow, one of the inserts in the "cone" had come out so the allen screw wouldn't grab. I ended up using a wood screw a little bigger than the hole and that worked perfectly!
Now I need to find a professional to come out and verify if the VS motor will work with my plumbing then I can (hopefully) buy that. But for now the original pump is again "whisper quiet"! So quiet in fact that I keep running outside to make sure it's running!!!
Ed