Club 80-90 Forums

Hi folks.
Has anyone replaced their rear wheel bearing carriers?
are they available?
I have vertical rock in my rear wheels. no lateral play though so I don't think it's the bearings, although I'd be daft not to replace them if I'm doing the carriers.
The wiki seems to suggest leaving them alone if the play is only vertical but how bad is too bad?

E D I T- https://www.brickwerks.co.uk/bearing-ca ... yncro.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; OUCH!!!!

Some time ago my Classic Vehicle friendly MOT closed. So I selected another recently established garage . They failed it on both front and one rear wheel bearings and a couple of minors and advisory for the other.

The fronts were set as per cone bearings with an almost impossible to detect play so I snicked them up taking care not to over tighten them and cause premature failure.I decided to change the failed rear bearing.

The big nut on the failed rear was a pig to loosen and had clearly been cross threaded on assembly and not fit for reassembly. So I had to source a second hand Bearing Carrier. However when I trial fitted the new bearing I found it was possible to slide it into the Bearing Carrier by hand. This boded ill for me and sure enough when fitted and torqued up this side felt like the advisory side in terms of a barely perceptible and impossible to measure side play. So I advised the newly trained tester that this was not bearing failure and in no way an indication of impending failure and he took my word for it. I guess the less than press fit between the bearing and the carrier could be eliminated with Bearing fit product but the faffing involved with that big nut put me off doing that. The van has passed a number of MOT's since then and the play has not increased. I have done some bit trips into France and one tour around Europe since then with no change.

My tentative suggestion without prejudice would be that if it is not flagged up as an MOT failure and is perceptible but difficult to measure the magnitude then leave well alone but keep an eye on it as it could be a slight clearance between the bearing outer and the carrier inner as was mine. Others may advise differently... And bear in mind that unless you are using brand new carriers it is possible that the second hand carriers you procure could be exactly the same.

Incidentally my torque wrench isn't up to that mega torque value so I used my body weight on a calibrated radius mark on my (length of scaffolding) lever bar.

Hope this helps
CS

Hmm. I,ve also had this problem. lots of vertical play but no horizontal.My mot had an advisory for this one year, I just left it and next year no advisory?and I hadn't done a thing! when I did check it the bearing carriers were fine, bearings a nice tight fit etc. I even measured the internal bore of the hub/carrier in both planes with an internal Mic, and they were perfectly roundin both bearing positions. in fact when I fitted new bearings I still had some vertical play just not quite as much. I put it down to this; when your feeling for play in the bearings vertically ,gravity does not come into play. ie you just lift the wheel up and down. however when feeling for horizontal play, the weight of the wheel/drum etc pushes the axle down into the lower part of the bearing so its difficult to feel any movement. ie if you could do all this in zero gravity or perhaps put the van on its side(a little easier) you would feel play in both directions. I have heard chat about hubs going oval before, but I think this is B**locks. The forces to do this would have to be incredible! the bearing would be destroyed first. Unless somebody proves me wrong of course! Just fit new bearings and I think it will be fine.

Thanks for the detailed replys guys.
I have a little play in the offside front bearing so will nip that up and leave the rears and see what the MOT man says when the time comes.
It's re-assuring to hear you did some big touring miles with yours like that and no problems Citizen Smith.
Yes, I was wary of replacing carriers with second hand ones which could well be as bad as mine so new bearings and bearing fit when the time comes.
Good point about gravity Chapperss, I guess I could wedge the wheel up slightly to take the weight before checking for lateral play.

Do not over tighten that front bearing ! Use correct tightening method as found in good manuals.

I hear you Multisi.

I take it you read this
https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/St ... l_Bearings" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

itchyfeet wrote:I take it you read this
https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/St ... l_Bearings" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yes. that gave me the hint that it might not be the bearings.

OK so now we have come out so to speak - in terms of hands on motor engineering only you understand - My bottom of the line criteria evaluating the safety implications in wheel bearing is this:
1/ would complete destruction of the bearing result in sudden loss of the wheel?
2/ How much din would it make before the wheel becomes incapable of guiding the vehicle?
3/ Would the problem develop gradually - preferably accompanied by noise?
I would be comfortable if the design criteria demanded that the wheel would be mechanically captured if all the balls or rollers somehow escaped which is in fact often the case whether a design intent or not

My experience of catastrophic failures:
Several soap box disasters on Big hill upper Clapton as a child - Silver Cross pram wheels
Triumph Herald/Vitesse steering king pin snapped - me once on a roundabout after high speed run from Dover to Essex and my mate twice through finding sweet spot (Mechanical resonance expressed as "Q" I think) by high speed running over cattle grid. You would have thought he would have learned the first time....

CS

Citizen Smith wrote:Several soap box disasters on Big hill upper Clapton as a child - Silver Cross pram wheels
Triumph Herald/Vitesse steering king pin snapped - me once on a roundabout after high speed run from Dover to Essex and my mate twice through finding sweet spot (Mechanical resonance expressed as "Q" I think) by high speed running over cattle grid. You would have thought he would have learned the first time....

CS

Yep. I had the same experience with pram wheels.
And My old man had a wheel come off a Triumph Herald too, drive shaft slid out of the axle and the whole lot overtook him.

P.s. bearings on order.

I noticed this on my van too. New bearings were fitted all round. I have a bit of play on the left rear so it must be the carrier

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

The bearing carriers are notorious for going oval in shape. By default, T25 rear wheel bearings have slightly more play than modern vehicles where much (these days) is taken up by bushings and the like. Some MOT places which are unfamiliar with the degree of acceptabnle play will give advisories or even fails. Its an ongoing problem.

It was/is equally common on bays: http://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads ... ent.17920/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CovKid wrote:Some MOT places which are unfamiliar with the degree of acceptabnle play will give advisories or even fails. Its an ongoing problem.

Hmmmm.... maybe I can educate my local friendly MOT man.

Mine had a new bearing fitted on the rear right as the old bearing was very noisy. The MOT garage did the bearing for me as I was unwell at the time. After which they passed it on the MOT but the following year the tester called me round to see the play on this same bearing, Quite a clunk up and down only. When I reminded him that they had replaced it for me he passed it again. This year a different tester at the same garage just checked it and passed it no comment. (Still too much play for my liking though) A friend says that he can machine the carrier and insert a spacer ring in which the bearing will mount? Has anyone ever heard of that ?

Yes, I had thought of a spacer ring, I could probably fit the carrier in the lathe at work but from posts on here the wear is very slight and hard to measure.
Would be interesting to hear how you get on if you decide to go down that road.