Wheel bearings on a 79 cruiser

[V.W.Dave]

Long story short,

The customer has had 2 different shops replace the front wheel bearings. Between replacing them they had to be retightend 4 times. He has now brought it to us because he didnt trust the work the other shops were doing. We got it 3 weeks ago with this story and loose bearings again. We took it apart to find on the driver side both inner and outer bearing races were cracked and on the driver side the outer race was cracked. We did a complete swival hub rebuild 3 weeks ago got him to take it for a drive for 2 days and bring it back so we could recheck eveything to make sure. (150ks and 2 days later he brings it back) We find that both wheels had a small amout of movement in them so we fixed it up and sent him on his way. 2 days later he returns to check it all out and it was 100% so now 2 weeks later he returns and both sides have quite a lot of play back in them.

This is a older farmer that owns the cruiser and it is only driven around the farm and to and from town (40ks round trip) so its not trashed or anything.

SO between 3 different workshops and 3 new sets of bearings we cant get this working right.

My first thoughts are either bent spindals or a bent diff housing. But in my experiance the little copper wear bush on the back side of the spindal gets worn if either of those problems exist.

Has anyone had a problem like this.

[76 Tourer]

Dave I had a similar problem on a work car and it turned out to be aftermarket spindles had been incorrectly machined ( too large ) bearing would come loose but was infact just seating into correct position . We also had the cracked bearing which was put down to the same thing .

Replaced spindles with another pair of aftermarket spindles and haven't had a problem since .

[85lux]

On some setups, the inner race of the inner bearing has an extra large fillet, to clear an extra large radius machined between the spindle diameter and face.
This is done to reduce the stress concentration.
If your bearing is a regular one with a regular fillet, it will not seat up against the face of thwe spindle, but get caught on the radius. then over time it will wear its way into the spindle before it either settles into its new home or something cracks...

I know this because a few years ago a bearing kit i bought for a GU front had bearings with small radius when they needed the big radius to clear the spindle fillett. i think the suffix on the bearing part number is greek letter alpha, signifying large fillett.

hope this helps.

[Short45]

Dave
I have been battling the same issue for a while now, did you manage to get it sorted in the end.
If so what's the solution ?

Thanks Chris