It failed the MOT on a driver's side front wheel bearing. Simple job I thought. I looked online and parts were so cheap, (even decent named ones), that I thought I might take the time to update all of the area. The car has had no real work done there since new. As an aside I also thought it would be good to update the suspension too when it was apart. So I broke the front leg assembly and replaced the spring and top bearing which was now only dry lubricated by rust! It literally crumbled when I touched it.
I started by fitting new steering knuckle, bearing, hub and hub nut. It's the large M24 castellated nut type, not the separate plain nut and locking cage. It went together sweet as a nut using a proper puller tool. Fitted it back in the car and torqued up. No dice, the bearing was still as though it had no torque on it at all. That was odd to say the least.
I broke it apart again and checked the fitment and found that somehow, even though I know I had pulled it in completely on the bench, I got a further almost 1/8 turn out of the fitting puller tool before it locked up again. I thought that would fix it and built it up again. Still no dice.
The only thing left as questionable seemed to be the CV joint. I checked the nut on the shaft and, sure enough, it spun on until around the torquing bite point then seemed to stick solid. It could not be wound past that point at all. There was no visible damage to the nut or shaft threads, but maybe a stretched thread was the problem, I thought.
So I then replaced the CV joint, with a brand new one of course, and refitted everything. The damned thing is still the same. I cannot come up with anything else which would be a possibility other than a supplied bad bearing. And of course removing the hub again destroys it.
All parts have been sourced cross referenced against both the Service Box part numbers and the car Reg number. They are all named parts, Febi Bilstein, Ridex, not brilliant but decent. The fitting of bearing into steering knuckle and hub into bearing was done on a bench in clean conditions with a new puller tool and went without a hitch.
I'm stumped. Does anyone else have any idea as to what may be going on here?
#2: Re: Front wheel bearing odd problem. Author: Sim, Location: West CountryPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2024 11:49 am ---- I had the exact same problem on 1.6 16v with Febi's hubs, they had different taper and are 0.5mm longer than the factory ones, so you end up squeezing the hub instead of the bearing when torquing up the hub nut. Had to resort to the original hub.
Weirdly, this oddity manifested on passenger side only, driver's side was all dandy with new parts.
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