Guest Alanman Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Yesterday we had another ride in a recovery truck, well 2 actually. woop woop. On the way down M1 another bearing bit the dust. If it wasnt so funny we could get quite upset. lol Okay, it's not expensive, a bearing is only £12 and only an hours work, but it's soooooo frustrating, and annoying. When its working and running I think it's the best car in the world, but when its sat at the side of the motorway waiting for the recovery truck I could quite easily see it burn where it sits. We've got to a point where we're we dont know what to do now. Is is the wheels? Is it the bearing I'm buying? Is it me fitting them? So I called Nez, a mechanic mate of mine for a bit of telephone councelling. Following a manly conversation about torque setting and temeratures of grease, it does look like I'm dogging them up too tight. Nez say the rears are suprisingly only finger tight, so they're are definately too tight. oops! The fronts are[i/] tighter but may be not as tight as I've been doing them. Doh! Nez advised bearing will, by design, get warm and expand, but how tight I do them there's no room to allow for this natural expansion and they are simply getting too hot and burning themselves out. This will happen more on long runs and that seems to be when they give up so it all adds up. This conversation will Nez and now knowing it could be ME at fault has weirdly made me feel better. I'm officially a dick but I do feel better about it. I've been doing Escort bearing for over 10 year and only just realised I've been doing them wrong. lol. Maybe on all the other cars I've done they've been fine because of the standard wheels, but the combination of the tight bearings and the big ass wheels and offsets has just been too much on bigcab. So new bearing to replace the latest casualty and a check on all the others is on the card for this week I think. Hopefully we've sorted out our bearing problem finally. Alanman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarineIguana Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 You need your own recovery truck Well lets hope you don't no more lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alanman Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 I'd love my own truck. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gavintwopies Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 M8, of mine used to scran wheel bearings all the time on his old mini as he had massize offset spacers (1-2") This too will put extra leverage on the bearing as the bearings are supposed to sit almost in the centre of the wheel and once the wheel is offset out of the arch the leverage force pulling the bearing up and out of the housing is massive........ and as you say having them too tight also wont help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alanman Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 (edited) We knew the bearings were getting a lot more stress with the wheel, but they've only been lasting a few thousand miles. lol. All I can do is fit them as per instruction and see what happens. I'd be happy and willing to change them all every winter if I can make them last that long. lol It's every month at the minute. Edited May 16, 2011 by Alanman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Paul Posted May 16, 2011 Admin Share Posted May 16, 2011 Alan, You friend is correct, they only need to be more or less finger tight. Do them finger tight and then just nip them But on a plus side, Car still looks amazing even on the back of the truck and look how much fuel you are saving!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alanman Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 I keep telling Clare we've saved money. lol I recon we need some stickers like the old fighter pilots to show how many kills we've had over the years. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest diggy Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 you should invest in some titanium bearings lol but saying that you would still end up killing them mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lee81 Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 If your using wheel spacers on the rear. Try having a spacing block of aluminium made that will space the hub out to where you need it. This will help the bearing sit more central and reduce the load on it. This is what they did on mk6 escort maxi rs2000. Later they then had a special independant beam design. The front bearings are a lot stronger than the rears and only thing you can do is fit decent bearings unless you want to spend mega bucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alanman Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 Hi Lee, no spacers. The new wheels are bespoke and made to fit. We did have the wider hubs as you described for the previous wheels so we could buy 'off the shelf' and in doing so the bearing was where it should be. But we've gone back to standard Escort set up for the new wheels to allow us to have the 13" wheels and epic dish. The fronts are basically 22mm in if using Ford alloys so we bought a set of Peugeot offset wheels and that was just about perfect. So to match, the original rear hubs were made to allow us to use the same Peugeot offset. This worked well for the last 10 years. The wider hub against the standard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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