Hi Listers,
This may be a little late, but I would like to jump into the fray with my
experience on wheel bearing spacers and shims.
It has been so many years now that I have NEVER installed the spacers on
my Morris, the one with Spridget hubs. The spacers give you almost
always a false sense of correctness about wheel bearing adjustment.
The earliest Morrises did not have wheel bearings that were thrust
bearings and used a spacer between the bearings. Remember what MG stands
for and you can see why the Spridgets have a lot of similarities, even
though the the most recent ones were essentially Austin cars. As decent
wheel bearings were designed to handle the thrust, they were used nearly
right away. However, the British, never one to make a change lightly or
change from "That's the way it has always been done" mind set, continued
to use the spacer with the new style bearings. The spacers were always
sloppy in the manufacturing tolerances and seldom fit just right. Sort
of a crap shoot for fit.
After ruining more wheel bearing sets than I care to admit by installing
them on customers cars using the spacers, I stopped using the spacers and
went to the conventional adjustment methods for wheel bearings. Since
then I have not lost a set due to hit and miss spacer adjustments. On my
own car, it has 560.000 miles on it, with the original spindles, this has
been the routine for over 20 years. On top of that, I simply never
repack them after installation. They last 80 to 100,000 miles whether
you never repack them or do it every 5 or 10,000 miles. Tapered or ball,
they last about the same.
The two critical things I have found is to wash out all the grease that
they are packed in and replace it with a high temp wheel bearing grease,
don't ever use the stuff in the packet to further pack the new bearings
with the factory grease, I find the two greases to be incompatible with
each other and tend to liquify soon. The other is to adjust the bearings
conventionally when they are new and then just drive the car until the
bearings are ready for replacement, or every 5 or 6 years.
By adjusting conventionally, I mean this way. All parts and seals new.
Assemble to the spindle, tighten the castle nut to about 20 pounds feet
torque, spin the wheel several revolutions. Then back off the nut about
1/4 turn or to about 5 pounds feet torque. Then put in a new cotter pin.
You have at least two selections for the cotter pin. Admittedly less
than an educated nut system, but almost always enough to get it just
right.
Putting in the spacer and or fiddleling with shims on it doesn't make a
whole lot of sense to me, when the alternate method works much better in
obtaining a correct adjustment.
My 2¢ worth, ± a farthing.
Paul
Paul Asgeirsson
Morriservice
9123 N Clarendon Ave
Portland OR 97203-2750
503-978-3998
PAsgeirsson@juno.com
On Mon, 9 Nov 1998 13:31:18 -0800 "Larry and Sandi Miller"
<millerls@email.msn.com> writes:
>I would be interested in obtaining an assortment of wheel bearing
>shims if
>you can find them. I have not seen them in a long time for any LBC. I
>know
>that they made them for the big Healeys but am not sure that they ever
>made
>them for a Sprite. I can't torque my front bearings anywhere near
>where they
>should be. I am thinking about trying to shim them.
>
>I had always thought that all of the spacers were the same but maybe
>not. I
>have a bunch of them collected over the years for various Spridgets
>and they
>all appear to be the same.
>
>Larry Miller
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter <nosimport@mailbag.com>
>To: Larry and Sandi Miller <millerls@email.msn.com>; Ulix Goettsch
><ulix@u.washington.edu>; Peter Samaroo <mrbugeye@hotmail.com>
>Cc: spridgets@Autox.Team.Net <spridgets@Autox.Team.Net>
>Date: 09 November, 1998 1:12 PM
>Subject: Re: King Pin Shims?
>
>
>>At 12:07 PM 11/9/98 -0800, Larry and Sandi Miller wrote:
>>>You don't happen to have wheel bearing shims do you?
>>-------------
>>Umm.... no but I've got some new 88G321 spacers (distance pieces).
>Want me
>>to find shims? My Bugeye parts book show spacer to be 2A4146 or
>alternative
>>ATA4064, and Mark 3, 4 book shows 88G321. Is there a difference? Drum
>v.
>>disc? What gives?
>>And I mispoke re: OE shim sizes. They were: 2A4168 = .003" 2A4007 =
>.008"
>>2A4008 = .012"
>>And we found some .005", .015", .032" Sorry for the error.
>>Peter C
>>
>>Peter Caldwell
>>1 very rough Innocenti
>>(the Sprite with an accent)
>>among other LBCs and 4WDBCs
>>Contact for: The Columbia County Bonspiel
>> Curling on 13 sheets @ 5 clubs in WI
>> Feb 5 - 7 1999
>
>
>
>
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