I do like the conical wheel bearing configuration used for my 50 year old truck’s front wheels. Cleaned and re-lubed as part of routine maintenance, done this past summer, original bearings and races still in pristine shape. And if a front wheel bearing goes bad as has to be replaced along w/the race, what I am looking at for the repair fee? $25? … lol …
Man, I don’t mean to date anyone but the last wheel bearing I re-packed was in 1968 on my 59 Pontiac. All the ones since then are just sealed and you replace the whole thing. I still have my 1950s motors manual that has bearing packing instructions. It’s like a history book.
A lot of full frame truck/SUV/vas used tapered roller wheel bearings all the way up till the late 90’s and some into 2000… I still have 2 vehicles with them…
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The last tapered roller bearings I did were fronts on a '97 Ranger (but that was just doing the rotors … inside of which are the bearings), and before that it was the rears on a '00 (?) Dodge minivan which were just no good.
(Come to think of it on the subject of another thread of improvising with tools - the torque spec on the ranger bearings was ridiculously small - I forget what but quite a bit below my lowest torque wrench capability of 25 inch lb. I forget exactly what I did, but it involved a digital fish scale and some appropriately weighed-out nuts and such suspended on a wrench. But that’s derailing this thread even more…)
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My procedure was to adjust the bearings first (tighten to the point of slight binding, then loosen a small amount), then adjust the drum brakes (99% of the jobs were drums) to where they rubbed slightly and evenly side to side.
Yeah excepting trucks which I don’t own, and trailer bearings.
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Once the tapered bearings are adjusted/seated correctly, if the cotter key doesn’t drop in the hole, you back the nut off until it will, you do not tighten the nut until it does or you take a good chance on damaging the bearing, I have seen way to many techs over tighten bearings and burn them up in too short of time…
I have run my bearings this way since the beginning, and always drove fast (back in the day, 3 digit mph speeds was very common as well as hard cornering) as well as all my hot rod friends and none of us ever had a tapered wheel bearing failure happen… I have always set them with just a slight bit of movement/play in them, so never used a torque wrench to adjust one, I, after being adjusted, can do the final adjustment so the cotter key will drop in only using my 2 or 3 fingers…
And BTW, since I have to get grease on my hands anyway to grease the inner cones and spindle, I most of the time just pack the bearings by hand, about as easy as getting up and finding the bearing packer… lol
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I’m totally self-taught and not a real mechanic so where my experience base is lacking I just follow the spec. (Like whatever the FSM said for torque - usually involves “torque to X lb” (to seat), then back off, then “torque to …” almost nothing. Then install cap & pin or whatever). And I never owned a bearing packer so always did them by hand. I haven’t screwed one up yet. Give me time.
All my trailers still have the “old fashioned” tapered bearings. Just did a complete overhaul on one of them and although I have a packing tool, I just used my hands like the old days. Take longer to go find it than to pack the bearings by hand. My process for tightening them remains the same- slowly tighten them as I spin the hub until more difficult to spin and then back off until the hub spins freely with no play. Never used a torque wrench and never had one fail prematurely… knock on wood…
I bought one of those bearing packers but just thought it was more trouble than it was worth. Maybe I just missed how to use it but didn’t trust it.
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Oh don’t get me wrong, they work great, at least mine does… But I forget to get it before I sit down to repack the bearings or whatever, if I was using a rack/lift, I would walk over and get it, but not worth getting up off the tire or floor after sitting down… lol
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Years ago I preferred to hire out my vehicle repairs, let the pros do it. I still did the most basic maintenance, but nearly all repairs I hired out. I’d still prefer to do it that way but with the more complex fuel injected Rabbit, I began experiencing problems with the pro-repair method. So I decided my best bet was to learn how to do it myself, and took an auto-repair night school course at the local high school. The first lesson was with 25 students in a classroom, not the shop.
Instructor: “One of the tasks I’m going to show you in this course is how a pack a wheel bearing.”
Instructor then walks to the cutest female student: “Hold out your hand, palm up!”
Cute female student : Puzzled , but holds hand out as instructed.
Instructor: Slyly puts a big dollop of wheel bearing grease onto her palm … lol …
@jkn - any news about the brake drum?
A lot of good ideas posted here on how to remove a stubborn brake drum. My guess, OP decided to hire the job out to to a shop
My favorite new (to me) way: cut or grind the heads off the posts that hold the shoes against the backing plate. Those posts are in every drum brake hardware kit I have come across. Some seem to be aluminum - easier to cut or grind. (Although old rusty steels ones aren’t very stout any more.)
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The only ones I used a torque measurement for were the Ranger bearings. I was doing the front brake rotors which also means doing the bearings because they’re seated inside of the rotor itself. It was an unfamiliar set-up to me so, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing and figured it best to follow the letter of the law.
What year Ford Ranger?? and 2 or 4WD??
'97 2WD. I think that’s the last year it was set up like that, and not on the 4WD
Edit: Correction - it seems it was used on 2WDs all the way up to 2011.
That is the standard wheel tapered wheel bearing set up that we are all talking about and the same for most older vehicles… I’ve done thousands of them… Same as normal trailers… Even the tow mortar and concrete mixers with the 12" wheels use the same setup…
The outer races are indeed as all/most of them are, are pressed into the hub itself, but you can knock them out with a punch and hammer and use a socket to install them…
I get that. I had just never done one inside of a brake rotor before was all I was saying. (Drums and trailer hubs, yes). Just wanted to make sure I got it right. So I figured out a way to do the torque as Ford specified rather than just by “feel.”
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