The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline 1953 3600 wheel bearings

Is there a way to convert factory front wheel bearing to roller bearings While keeping the 8 lug wheels?

First off Welcome to Stovebolt!

Since your topic falls into the realm of the Driveline Forum I've moved your post over there for further conversation and help.

Others should be along soon to provide some helpful info. Once again, Welcome!

On this forum some time ago, a "bearing man" said ball bearings had less contact with the race and he thought they were better in our application.

I've always thought the roller bearings must be cheaper to make.

My '56 Cadillac has huge ball bearing wheel bearings. The car weighs 5000 lbs. 200,000 miles and they're still going strong. There is no reason to switch to roller bearings.

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IF you decide to convert to roller bearings ...

New Departure # 9726 (inner) and 9725 (outer) were original equipment. These were known by their GM part numbers 909726 and 909725. New Departure (among others) also made a direct replacement roller version of these bearings numbered 909726R and 909725R.

Note that the adjustment procedure for roller bearings is very much different from ball bearings.

We bought a 51 3100 that had been converted to the roller bearings. I would not have done that but will leave them in there. We have 4 Chevys with the ball bearings and never had a problem, it might that I do maintenance occasionally.

Bill - Are these bearings correct for the 3600??? He’s asking about converting his 3600, not a 3100.

Yes, those are right for a GMC 150 (3/4 ton) and I'd bet your life that 3/4 ton Chevys use the same.

Thank you for all the help with fining the wheel bearings

Thanks Bill. You are right that the ball bearing numbered units mentioned are listed for both Chevy and GMC 3/4 tons. I did a pretty thorough web search and found none of the "roller style" replacement bearings (inner or outer) to fit 3/4 ton Chevy's or GMC's currently available. In fact I couldn't find a single cross reference to any roller style bearings for these applications. Just lots of the original style "ball bearing" units which seem to be pretty widely available.

Hope Bristol's Tree S is okay with using original style bearings as there doesn't seem to be an alternative out there.

Back 60 to 70 years ago, we had more failures with roller bearings than ball bearings. Even with the sorry grease we had in those days, ball bearings ran almost forever. If I needed wheel bearings, I would find some used ones. With today's grease they will run forever.

If you have deep pockets.

909046R

909045R

Thanks for finding those and posting jimgmc!

Having "deep pockets" is an understatement at those prices IMHO though. I'd have to stick with tried and proven original ball bearing sets. A person could buy a whole bunch of those for what would be handed over for these.

I don't need any wheel bearings but I had to look. $300 each! That's absolutely ridiculous!

There was kit available at one time NLA these days. I found the part numbers but that was a dead end. You can' t use dimension bearings because the inner one needs something for the seal to run on. The ball bearings are spendy enough already, $60+ last I looked. IIRC they also fit Buicks from the 50s.