ha, that makes sense, just seems I never heard of the bushing types of bearings called “bearings” and anything which used any type of rolling parts were “bearings”.
I would probably buy 2 of those bearing nuts and ziptie the spare to the steering shaft since it’s not designed with any self-lubrication. Maybe some teflon tape(used on plumbing pipe threads) would help for a little bit… Bronze not brass for sure.
Going down the rabbit hole: A bushing is a non-integrated (typically, as here, replaceable) plain bearing. Plain bearings are bearings where a surface slides against another surface in some way.
And as long as the zip tie doesn’t fail first, the zip tie makes a lot of. I myself bought two of these when I bought them, and… since I have completely redone my shop since then and have no idea where the replacement lives any more. If I had zip-tied it to the tractor I’d have a better chance of finding it when I need it.
I wouldn’t get creative up front trying to extend the life of the bearing. It’s a wear part. The bearing should be a close fit on the shaft, and teflon can embed particles just like oil. However, I can imagine all sorts of short-term hacks while waiting for a bushing to arrive, like stuffing some of the smallest zip ties you can find, tip down, through from the top of the bushing to take up some space so that you can steer the tractor back to the shop. In my case, I could steer a little in reverse, so I was able to tweak the steering while reversing all the way to my garage to await the new part.
LOL, I’ve purchased two of more of enough things to only not be able to find them when I eventually needed them again that I now will go to great lengths to attached the spare to the device.
Now that it’s not 1am I see that the replacement bearing does look like it’s bronze. And that is probably why the shaft in the video was only clean but not worn. In the video, the worn bearing looked like it was shiny silvery looking so thought it was steel.