Club 80-90 Forums

After much advice from club8090 members and preparing myself to service the rear nearside wheel bearings I bought a 46mm socket and 1m breaker bar. The previous assembly was making a lot of noise, notably on coasting. The socket and breaker bar arrived yesterday afternoon and I thought I’d have a go at the rear hub nut. After removing the split pin, it spun off with no effort on my part. It appears it wasn’t tightened to the correct torque when whoever last replaced the rear wheel bearings, or for some reason had become loose.

This morning taking the nut off completely, degreasing and cleaning threads with a thread file, I decided to put it back and torque to 500 Nm. Now, there appears to be little to no play in the wheel when rocked top to bottom, or side to side. A quick test drive revealed no bearing noise, no vibration when coasting, no sound of rubbing, no heat detectable around the wheel etc. 

I still want to have the wheel, drum and hub off and stub axle out to check the bearings, stub axle and replace with a reconditioned housing and bearing assembly which I had been working on and had prepared for replacing the old housing. But this is an interesting exercise in checking everything, perhaps not trusting the work of others etc. The van is still relatively new to me and I don’t know who last serviced the bearing. 

Thanks to all who took the time to offer advice about breaker bars, torque multipliers etc.
 

Why take it apart if it feels good now? Just check the play when you do a service inspection next.

That’s a good question and I think the answer is to just keep monitoring the situation. If the bearing is good then why change it?

I suspect that what has happened is the previous owner had the bearing changed whilst the housing remained on the vehicle. Thus, the stub axle was never pressed fully into the inner race of the inner bearing. Tightening to the correct torque of 500 Nm should pull the stub axle into its correct position. However, because the nut wasn’t tightened to the correct torque the stub axle was never positioned correctly.

TBH which garages ever look up torque spects etc for cars.

Go to any garage and look at the different cars they service.

I doubt very much they have workshop manuals for each car.

As long as you are able to DIY and read and have access to Bentley. The buses are a joy to work on.