Have a 9" 28 spline, big bearing, 11" drums, trac lock, sealed bearing with seals in the housing. Noticed the wheels had negative camber with the truck (avatar) on the ground. take the weight off by jacking the truck up and they go back to normal. The axle flange and drum are moving not the housing. Pulled drum off and can move the axle in and out .08 or so. The bearing is moving back and forth in the housing. When pulled out I can also move it up and down a small amount. ( this is with the backing plate and retainer on and tight. ). If I pull the retainer off I can see the bearing is inside the backing plate, the retating ring does not touch the bearing. Is this normal? Bearing dimensions od 3.14 id 1.5 cup width .825
Have you had any work done to it ? Like shortened , welded on, ??? Wide wheels ? Some camber and toe is normal from the factory and actually helps keep it straight .
That's pretty funny. Can you imagine a straight axle with 9 degrees of camber? Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
Oh, oh, you are correct. I misread the damn thing. I'm going to go back and delete the whole post. Now anyone who reads this will never know how badly I screwed up!! THANKS. You saved me massive embarassment.
What age is your eyes... or, just wait, it gets worse ..some of the thread titles I THINK I see are nothing even close to what they really say.
I guess I'm an official serior citizen. Just cracked into my 70s, I don't understand. Just a few weeks ago I was in my 50s. What happened? Now, where the hell is that bathroom?
The bearing should be tight on the axle and the retainer snug against the bearing. Bearing OD should be a snug slip-fit in the housing and when seated should stick out of the housing the thickness of the brake backing plate. Wrong size bearing?
Good on ya Vic...many wouldn't bother to go back and do that! OP...give us a few pics from behind of the problem and a look at the wheels you are using. Noticeable camber from a solid rear axle is very odd...especially if taking the weight off fixes it! (Unless the weight is beyond the carrying capacity of the axle or maybe the spring locations are far inboard from the expected location.) We need to get a look at the problem as it exists!
It looks like a heavy frame and truck cab, is it just all too heavy for that poor nine inch... Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
There should not be (never has been) any camber or toe on any Ford solid rear axle. NASCAR, however, does allow about 1-2 degrees camber/toe, accomplished with special spline machining. As has been stated, the axle housing is either way over-loaded, or the axle bearings are wrong.
If by negative camber, you mean that the inside of the tires are in a position to wear, then straight rear ends do this over time naturally. This happens due to the weight of the center section simply pulling the whole assembly down in the middle. Bracing can help to eliminate this but it needs to be braced on a relatively straight rear end versus one that is already 'bent'.
Almost every axle will naturally go toe in on acceleration and toe out on braking. This is due partly to the flex in the axle shaft between the carrier and outer bearings. If you have a toe out condition on acceleration due to a bent hosing you are likely to loose control or have a squirrelly vehicle. Vise versa on braking, toe in and you'll have trouble. Almost every axle will experience a change in camber if the weight of the vehicle is taken off or applied to the rear axle. Also if extra weight is added to the rear. Again the flex In the shaft and load applied to the housing. Also this tends to increase naturally over time due to a constant load on the housing. This can be exaggerated if wide wheels with short offsets are used. Just look at a 15" wide rear tires that seem to wear hard on the inside. So with this In mind, if you were to set up an axle in a jig an achieve perfect straight alignment , once under a car you'd most certainly have negative camber. To achieve zero camber in the rear end under a vehicle with a load on it ,the housing must be built with the change in mind. For these reasons, the housings are capable of tolerating 2* of misalignment without damage. However the bearings do wear and should not be moving or allow movement of the shaft. If the bearings allow upward movement that would increas the measured camber under the weight of the vehicle. The bearings would also allow fore and aft movement. For a drag car you want zero camber on launch and hard acceleration and slight toe in. For a twisteis car you want some noticeable negative camber. For a street car you'd want some slight negative camber. For a working truck you'd want some slight positive camber empty, slight negative at full load.
It's not terribly unusual to build negative camber into a race axle, for a full-floater the hubs are cambered and the outer axle splines are ball-shaped, for a semi-floater the whole tube has to be angled and in this case the inner splines have to be shaped to allow it. Whether you'd get a hundred thousand miles of street use out of a setup like this is questionable. In this case I think we can be confident that the axle wasn't supposed to be this way. It still sounds like either something wrong with the bearing, or someone put the wrong bearing on the axle.
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