Front wheel bearings....fixing the seats Options

[PRS914-6]

Justin has a wheel shake and decided to replace the front wheel bearings. As I have recommended here many times, we MIG welded a bead on the races and they fell out of the hubs. Never beat them out!!!! Why? It damages the seats where the races bottom out and the races when pressed in won't seat squarely. We did find one seat that was previously damaged. To try to fix it I machined a piece of round stock so that it fit with .001 clearance in the bore and machined the end square in the lathe. I coated the end with valve grind compound and rotated it back and forth on the seat until it felt smooth. It knocked all those burrs down smooth and should have remained square with the bore. (we hope)

Here is a copy of a previous post I made about the subject and some pictures of the tool we made. Justin will have to comment on the success of it after it's assembled.

What happens VERY frequently is people drive the old races out with a punch and in the process whack the seating area. Even though it looks fine the seating lip has a slight swell in it and when the new races are installed they don't seat quite parallel. To get rid of the play, you have to over-torque the nut. I can almost guarantee this is what is going on. If you did a search, you will find a thread where I MIG weld the races to shrink them and they fall out. I never ever beat them out.

Most likely someone in the past did the damage and it's hard to see.

If the races are perfectly parallel the wheel bearing play will come out the second the nut touches the washer. If you have to force the nut tight to get rid of the play, the races are not parallel.