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Can you overpack a hub with grease?

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Dougal

Dougal

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Hi All,
Fitted one of my re-machined front hubs to the 100 today. I have never done this before and was surprised by the stiffness(not the right word ) when I got it all together. I packed as much grease as I could around the inner bearing and then again around the distance piece and outer bearing. Then some more under the oil seal.
Once on the axle I was expecting it to spin but it does not. It does go round with no resistance and no noise, just no spin.
I'm putting this down to the grease forced into the bearings.
Any thoughts from you guys who know what your doing.
Regards
Dougal
 
Sounds ok to me, try putting a wheel on and it should spin, if not, you may have not got the distance between the two bearings right, as from memory you may have to use shims if it doesnt spin, or you have tightened up the lock nut too much
Why are you re-machining the hubs?
 
Norm Nock discusses this procedure in his book.

The best way to setup the front hub is to do it dry, then when the shims are figured out, pack the bearing with grease.

The distance piece is necessary and shims are used to achieve the perfect zero end float with no-drag situation. One should have 2-3 shims of each thickness to get things correct. The castellated nut is tightened down all the way tight and rocking the wheel should result in no perceptible float and no drag.

Cracked spindles can be a problem on Healeys and getting the end float incorrect is supposed to contribute to this.
 
Should have stated previously that in a couple of hours with lots of shims, I was never able to get it perfect and had to be satisfied with a [caution: technical jargon ahead] teensy amount of play in the wheel. This was a couple of years ago and so far so good.
 
steveg said:
Should have stated previously that in a couple of hours with lots of shims, I was never able to get it perfect and had to be satisfied with a [caution: technical jargon ahead] teensy amount of play in the wheel. This was a couple of years ago and so far so good.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

The MGB front wheel bearing setup is identical, only the spec on them is .002" - .004" endfloat, so it's easier to obtain (measuring "zero" is inherently problematic).

Since I owned MGBs prior to the Healey, I always used the MGB spec (Keoke only corrected me about a year ago...). :blush:
 
Interesting, I don't have any shims.... there were none when I removed the hubs. Looking through my manuals I don't think my car BN1 should have them. It was only on the BN2 that tapered bearings were introduced.
Zblu, I had the splines welded up and re-cut.
Dougal
 
BN1s don't use shims.

The BN1 uses a unique type of ball bearing with a thrust race to prevent it from coming apart when cornering. FYI, don't ever replace your bearings with standard ball bearings - very dangerous!!!!

Because the bearings are different, the BN1 spacer takes most of the lateral load from the nut.

Alan
 
healeynut said:
<span style="font-weight: bold">BN1s don't use shims.</span>

The BN1 uses a unique type of ball bearing with a thrust race to prevent it from coming apart when cornering. FYI, don't ever replace your bearings with standard ball bearings - very dangerous!!!!

Because the bearings are different, the BN1 spacer takes most of the lateral load from the nut.

Alan
Click to expand...
I did not know that.
 
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