play in rear wheel bearings

[bob_rich]

Hi folks

Have started to reassemble the rear suspension and found I had some very slight up and down movement at the rear of the hub. decide to strip down and check. stripped out the hub and found the rear stub axle shaft inner bearing ( a new one) has about 0.5mm of up and down movement. By that I mean if I hold the shaft and then use hand force to move the bearing outer ring parallel to the shaft there is around 0.5mm of movement as seen with a dial gauge. i thought this was high. If however I apply the force normal to the shaft (at 90 degrees) the movement is just under 0.1mm.

Is this too much for a new bearing?

i was replacing the bearings as a matter of course and the old ones seem to have less play that above

the outer race ring is quite slack in the hub so plan to use some Loktite bearing seal ( is that the correct term?) and that may account for some of the play I felt on the complete assembly

looking forward to comments and thanks

Bob

[andyelan]

Hi Bob

This seems very odd to me. While there is always some cleance in bearings it should only be a few microns not half a millimeter. Normally you wouldn't feel any movement. That said I've never heard of a new bearing from a reputable manufacture being wrong, so are you sure this is where the problem lies. Don't want to state the obvious but you havn't mixed up the old and new bearings have you

As far as using Loctite goes, you shouldn't do it, the bearings should be a snug but sliding fit in the housing not solid. That said if the clearance is excessive and the housings otherwise be scrap, as a last resort whats there to loose. I tried it on my Europa as a tempory fix some 20 years ago and it's still going strong (if it ever need to come apart though that might be fun)

Regards
Andy

[CBUEB1771]

the outer race ring is quite slack in the hub so plan to use some Loktite bearing seal ( is that the correct term?) and that may account for some of the play I felt on the complete assembly

The inboard and outboard bearings should both be a light press fit in the hub carrier. Many people heat the hub carrier on the theory than press fitting the bearing causes some plastic deformation of the hub carrier therefore reducing the number of times you can replace bearings before the hub carrier become useless. You either have the wrong bearing or or hub carrier is damaged.

[paddy]

When I took mine apart there was quite a lot of electrolytic corrosion in the bearing seat, and material is lost this way so the new bearings did not need pressing in - they could be pushed in very easily by hand.

I too have had Loctite in there with no problems.

Paddy

[alexblack13]

http://www.loctite.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/h ... 000000J02K

I prefer to heat the housings gently with boiling water. It stops the bearing taking a 'cut' every time you press one in. Bad idea.. You Will then end up with a slack fit. If this is the case try the above Locktite 660 product. It will fill the gap and hold the bearing (I use it at work) It can be disassembled when required.

Also check the bearing clearance... Normal is C... (ISO) Higher precision ones are available but you don't need them.

Alex B.. Good luck with it.

[bob_rich]

Hi All thanks for various bits of info and ideas.

I have recently checked 5 further bearings (Sue Millar kindly lent me two new unopened ones to check) and they all have around ~0.5mm of axial play. A note I found on the web (see below) suggests that axial play can easily be very much higher than radial play. Axial play was easier to measure than radial play.

Also I have found that all 6 of the bearings outer rings are "fairly slack" in the alloy housing and the feel of them is much like the feel of the problem that started this whole investigation off. I plan to refit the bearing in the alloy housing using Loctite as suggested by a couple of posters. this I feel will eliminate the slight (radial) play that I felt.

I have attached a note on the bearings I measured with as much info on them as I could. Hope it might prove useful to anyone else with this problems and also some of the bearing experts may like to comment.


http://www.bearingworks.com/technical_d ... arance.php

regards and thanks

Bob

[bob_rich]

Hi Folks

Have refitted the rears suspension after re-assembling bearing with a bit of loctite to get rid of the play of the outer race in the housing. There is still a tad of play that can just be felt and gives a peak to peak at the wheel near the top of the wheel of around 0.2mm (see picture).

Would welcome an opinion because I cant seem to get rid of that last little bit! It seems other posts in earlier time have said a lot more play than this would be acceptable.

Car will be road use touring and so forth

looking forward to comments

Bob