You torque the ball bearings in to the specified torque to seat the balls into the race and put a slight preload on the bearing cages. Once torqued in you back off a flat on the nut, sometimes a little bit more is required, but you do need some amount of pressure on them if you want good service life.
Btw, 33 pounds is a pretty standard figure, including passenger cars up through the early 60s when most changed over to tapered bearings.
Last edited by Dragsix; 03/13/2019 5:38 PM.
