The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Front wheel bearing jumps the race

I just experienced a problem with my right front wheel bearing, and when I took it apart I had a little surprise. It looks like at some point the ball bearings were rolling between the hub surface and the back race, rather than between the two races. If you compare the pictures of the hubs, you can see the bearing "track" in the right picture, while the left one is normal. The really odd thing is I haven't had the front wheel bearings apart for several years, and somehow it just came loose recently. There was a cotter pin, so the only things I can think happened are either the spindle threads are so worn that the castle nut was able to skip threads, or maybe this damage was done to the hub before and the race was able to move in the hub over time due to the uneven mating surface.

Anybody ever seen this?

The front wheel bearings should be inspected, greased, adjusted every 10,000 miles.

Oil/filter change every 2000 miles

Chassis lubrication (and steering parts inspection/adjustment) should be done every 1,000 miles.

Those front wheel bearing were most likely neglected?

http://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/chevyowner/48tom21.htm

My bet is that they were installed wrong or with a part missing. If you could take another pic of all of the parts which were in there and place them in the order in which they were removed, we might be able to get to the bottom of this.

It looks like it was assembled without installing the outer race on one side. Now the hub is trashed.
Jerry

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I probably have less than 1,000 miles on the truck in the 6 years I've owned it. I did a complete brake job about 5 years ago and repacked the front bearings at that time. I had no issues in the following five years, until just recently, when I noticed the right wheel bearing was lose. I'm pretty sure all the parts were present, and installed correctly, because both sides were the same. I suspect maybe the bearings were just worn out. I cleaned up the outer races that were pressed into the hub (pictures attached), but not the inner ones, nor the bearings. Not sure how deep the ball path is supposed to be in these outer races.

Can someone tell me if the original factory bearings were branded "New Departure" in 1949?

Would this be an opportunity to consider a switch to roller bearings? Not sure how much is involved.

I have new tapered roller bearings arriving today. Was just curious why I experienced the unexpected failure.

Those outer races look OK- - - -if they're not pitted it would probably be OK to re-use them. Most replacement bearings come as a 3-piece set, however, the ball cage plus inner and outer races. As long as they're assembled and preloaded properly, there's absolutely nothing wrong with ball bearings. Any good bearing supply place should be able to use the old bearing races for OD and ID reference, and find a tapered roller bearing that will swap. The tapered roller bearings will probably be a LOT less expensive, also.

One sticking point, however- - - -the surface the seal rides on is integral with the inner bearing race on the inboard ball bearing. It's necessary to fabricate a sleeve that's a snug fit over the spindle on the inside to give the grease seal a place to run when swapping to roller bearings.
Jerry

I'm guessing it wasn't assembled correctly. It looks exactly like the one I found on my truck after someone installed the inner race for the outer bearing on the backside of the outer bearing race. The balls were being held in place by the outer thrust washer. It worked for a while that way, got loose, then ended up looking like that. It would be easy to assemble it wrong with the inner race behind the bearing, instead of being held in place by the outer washer. The inner race is the last thing to go on before the washer, and nut. My bearing cage was trashed like that one.

I'd take the other side apart & see how it looks.

I took a picture of the old bearing races (didn't want to clean the old bearings).They were assembled in the order pictured, with the outer pair on the left, and the inner pair on the right, which I'm pretty sure is correct. I've taken apart both sides, and they were both the same. At this point it doesn't matter because I just finished installing the new tapered roller bearings shown in the second picture. All seems to be good now.

Can someone tell me if the original factory bearings were branded "New Departure" in 1949?[/quote]



Just removed new departure bearings from my 44 and believe they were original.

Thanks for that link. Very interesting. The history makes me want to keep the old bearings around just for nostalgia.

There was a thread recently which had your problem and he discovered that he had put the outer ball bearing in backwards and had pictures similar to your wiped out bearings..