Technical Wheel bearing failure

Ive never put additional grease in the hubs , the exception being my boost trailer hubs with bearing buddies , those are packed !

 

I remember car company's recommending repack every 30,000 miles but oil and grease products have improved greatly.

 

My 50 GMC with stock ball bearings had a noticeable squeak from the drivers front wheel on my way to the gas station after coming out of winter hibernation a few years ago. Filled the tank and felt the front wheel around the center as best I could without pulling the hub cap and it was a bit warm. Decided to drive it home and after a mile or so it got loud and I pulled over and now it was smoking hot. All I had was a multi-tool and my wife had a tube of sunscreen.

Popped the cap off the wheel hub to access the outer bearing and squirted it full of sun screen, put the cap back on and made it another 5 miles or so to my shop. All new roller bearings went in and I don’t think I have even thought about them since reading this post. I’ll repack the bearings after the snow melts.

 

I use nothing but “ Power up” grease in my wheel bearing!






Bones

 

Our 327 powered 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery

Hello,

As nice as our SBC powered 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery turned out, the initial drive home and for the next long months of working to get it road worthy/safe took plenty of work. One was replacing the front wheel bearings. There was a funny noise that was not the motor workings. So, as I spun the front wheels up on a jack stand, it made a smaller noise.

So, I opened up and saw the bearings were loose and worn. The road noise on most old cars covers up this common happening. But, our sedan delivery had full insulated upholstery and it was pretty quiet inside.

Any oddball noise did come up, like the wind noise coming through the opening vent when it was shut, the little holes in the firewall and around the pedals, etc. A quiet interior allows anyone to be in ground zero for listening to other sounds that should not be heard or making inroads into the cab.

The wheel bearings were well worn, and after a road trip back to our old Westside neighborhood to the old Ford Parts Obsolete store, I was able to get a set of bearings and another spare set, too. It was handy that the store was located several blocks from my mom’s house and of course, we stopped for her excellent dinner(s).


Jnaki

It was like night and day after I installed the new front wheel bearings. But, that did not make the whole sedan delivery road worthy and safe. That process took the next several months of working on the project until the sedan delivery was safe enough for my wife to drive by herself to visit her friends and go shopping. She liked it because of the ride and handling, as well as the cool A/C.

With all new stuff, and a finished front end project, the 327 powered 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery gave us countless miles of reliable/safe road trips all over So Cal for surf trips, camping and photo shoots along the way. (not to mention weekly trips to the Westside to take our mom out for dinner or have one of her fabulous meals…)

No, we did not take her to dinner at a nice restaurant in our 327 powered Sedan Delivery. She said it reminded her of my old Flathead powered, high school, Sedan Delivery that made up the 3rd car in a two car garage home. She blamed me for killing some of her prized backyard grass.

 

The beast had sat for at least 25 years in the bush, season after season until they dragged it out, I dragged it home. I eventually got it apart, and the one area where the rust never got to was the fibrous grease packed wheel bearings. I saved the stuff when I cleaned the bearings for no reason other then it was an oddity I'd never seen before.
In agreement most will avoid regular service till it breaks or requires attention, added up, not doing it does make the repair more costly in most instances.

 

While that will work, the one running hot is doing damage to the bearings. It is much better to do preventative maintenance than break down maintenance.

 

I agree but sometimes things don't last as long as one expects. If you notice a temperative rise, you might need the maintenance now instead of when the next scheduled one's time is up.

 

While I mentioned preventative maintenance, I had a front wheel bearing failure on my F250 tow rig. I'd had the truck a couple of years and never checked the front wheel bearings. Shame on me.

 

Some high temp grease use Bentonite clay and should not be used with lithium grease

 

Worked at a company building paper machinery thru the 70's. Learned how to handle really expensive tapered roller bearing sets early on, expensive like $2k per set, 4 sets on a punch unit. I honestly don't know if they were Timken or Fafner bearings.

Anyway, their training person taught me to clean even brand new bearings before greasing them. However I didn't use a parts washer, I used a solvent, clorothane, more appropriately called 1,1,1 tri chloroethylene, to wash the bearings. Always fresh from the drum, in a stainless steel wash bucket not used for anything else.

So when I was racing dirt track cars, I'd take the bearings and hubs to work, and clean them with the same stuff, keeping the bearings matched to the races they were broken in with. This solvent evaporated completely leaving no residue. Repacking the bearings later at home was easy. Never had any bearing failure doing it that way.

Of course I believe that the solvent has been taken out of use, as it was bad for you. Like carbon tet, and before that benzene, etc.

For the last 25 years or so, I've used brake clean spray, followed by hot water and Palmolive, quickly drying and packing with the new grease. Yes sounds odd, but it works for me...