Front Spindles and Bearing Spacers

[Ray McCrary]

Actually, the thing is elegantly simple. The interference fit between the bearing retainer nut, inner race of outer bearing, spacer/shims, the inner race of the inner bearing, and finally the inner spindle shoulder creates a rotating column around a solid shaft. As you may recall, a column is stiffer than a solid rod of the same diameter because of added surface area.

Regards,
Ray McCrary
"Speed is Life; of course Luck and Altitude are helpful, too."

[Ray McCrary]

Quite true. The tapered bearings have a much higher side-load bearing strength than the ball bearings. But you still have to use the spacer.
Ray McCrary
"Speed is Life; of course Luck and Altitude are helpful, too."

[Malcolm Castle]

Bob Grunau
Yoy chaps scare the hell out of me. I installed roller bearings in both TCs several years ago. The 48 TC has been driven from sea to shining sea many times and has clocked over 80,000 miles. The 49 TC has approx 30,000 miles. I did not install the spacers after bearing installation, however, after all the imput I am sure before the spring I will break them down and magnuflux the axles.

Regards
Malcolm Castle

[m.jablonski@mei.unimelb.edu.au]

I thought I'd sent this to the list but it hasn't appeared so I presume I only sent it to the individual whose posting I was replying to.

I believe that by including the bearing spacer the stub is preloaded and that this reduces stress cycling in the stub root. Stress cycling is the primary cause of fatigue failure. Increasing the effective diameter of the stub (by use of the spacer) also reduces the stress level at the root and this also improves the fatigue life.

When I converted my hubs to tapered roller bearings I used the bearing numbers given in TSO, in an article by F E Old. These correspond to those posted by Bob Grunau.

When I came to do the work I found that the inner and outer races were stepped in relation to one another by 1.25mm which would have resulted in the hub and brake drum being pushed out by that amount and the space between inner races greater than the length of the original spacer. I ended up making a new inner spacer (the one the oil seal runs on) with a thickness of 0.200" (original 0.250") to compensate for the 1.25mm. I also made up an additional spacer, 0.100" thick, to go between the bearings. Then, with shims, I set up the bearings for a clearance of 0.005". The shims were available from my local automotive parts supplier (Repco in Oz). The arrangement was similar to that on my MGB. Interestingly, I needed 0.020" of shims on one side and 0.015" on the other. I could have made the 0.100" spacer a little thicker to reduce the number of shims I needed.

With apologies for the late posting,

Mark Jablonski
TC6022

[Skip Kelsey]

Alan:

How many "standard" engines do you think are still out there. About all that is left in Std. are the re-sleeve jobs. Also, I think a lot of people are getting a little tired of the overpriced junk that is being offered in some areas. I know that I am. On a positive note, you just stick with the balls!!

Cheers:
Skip Kelsey..............................