The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Project Journals 1952 Chevrolet 3100 Project

10/02/19: (morning) Second thoughts haunted and interrupted my sleep last night about the wheel bearing adjustment I did on the passenger side yesterday. It suddenly dawned on me that the tapered bearings would not be adjusted the same as roller bearings. I’ve adjusted tapered roller bearings dozen’s of times before so I don’t know why I feel so unsure about doing it. I guess I don’t want any re-do’s. I reached out to my fellow “bolters’ and posted that question. It set off a string of reply’s and the general consensus was it’s not the same as setting ball bearings. Nobody had the same answer as to the proper procedure. I’m sure some of them are right on, some are close enough and some are dead wrong. It’s up to me to apply logic and sort out the reply’s. In the past I have always applied enough torque to seat the bearings, back off, retighten to take of all slack, then back off at least 1/2 flat to the first notch. This had worked for me in the past and seems to line up with most of the reply’s I received. This is the procedure that I applied to readjust the passenger side bearings.

The drivers side was next to install. I wasn’t too thrilled with the way I installed the bearing races yesterday,. Since I have a 20 ton press, I decided that I would use that to install the races. The races are recessed into the hub and after looking for and not finding a suitable socket to finish the press, I took the old bearing races and ground the OD enough to slip into the hub. My 20 ton HF press needed a little tweaking to get the spindle parallel to the frame. It was welded in crooked and the only options were to remove the weld and re-weld it in place or just grind the face of the spindle flat. I choose the later as it was easier, took much less time and accomplished the same goal.

Pressing in the bearing races went perfect. Using a steel plate to press them in flush then using the old ground races to finish seating. I used the flat plate and the press to install the grease seal and that went flawless. I finished greasing and installing the remaining wheel bearing components, the hub and final wheel bearing adjustment. I installed the wheel, torquing to 80 ft/lbs, then adjusted the brake anchor pin and shoes.

This completed rebuilding the front end. YEA! I opened up this can of worms on July 22 and it took over ten weeks to close it back up. Unfortunately, during this debacle, I noticed that the brake master cylinder was weeping so I won’t get to test out my newly rebuilt front end until I fix that leak. I ordered a rebuild kit and removed the MC but found the internals too rusted to be rebuilt so I ordered a new master cylinder and I’m just waiting for it to arrive. Does it ever end?