front wheel bearings

[healeyneil]

I think I read a post a while back that mentioned a kit to fit taper roller bearings at the front. Any experience? Im tempted to go to my bearing stockist and get an equivalent from them and see how it goes

 

[regularman]

Um, 30203 and 30205 bearings IIRC, Timken or equivalent.

 

[ChrisS]

I used the following bearings and races: 07097/07204 (inner) and 05066/05185 (outer) with a 13649 seal. I have also used a 07098 inner bearing when the 07097 was unavailable. The only difference is the ID: 0.9842” / 25 mm for the 07097 and 0.9835” / 24.981 mm for the 07098. Both will use the large race for the series 07204.

The alternative bearings are the 30205 and 30303 which are wider. The 07097 / 07098 bearing is 0.5910” wide where as the 30205 is 0.6398”. 05066 is 0.5662” wide verses the 30303 at 0.6004”. This affects the adjustment to the distance piece if that is going to be reused / modified / shimmed. There is a good discussion about the distance piece reuse here https://www.team.net/html_arc/spridgets-mod/200203/msg00008.html The worry is that the race can spin without the distance piece and chew up your spindle.

If you reuse the distance piece you will most likely need to file the groove in the castle nut to get the cotter pin in; it should be pretty soft and easy to do. You want to go long on the distance piece / thick on the shims and work your way down to 0.001" and 0.003" end float at about 45 ft-lbs torque. Start with about .200” and work down (assuming the 07097 and 05066 bearings – I haven’t do it with the 30303 / 30205). Try not to torque the nut with insufficient shims-the rollers or races will flat spot. Also, when you get done the rotor will be slightly off center with the caliper and the caliper may need to be shimmed.

Another piece if information is a friend of mine replaced his 7 year old roller bearings with new ones and ran into a problem. Apparently the new inner bearing 07098 that he used had a lip on the retainer that interfered with the distance piece; He had to put a chamfer in the ID of the big end of the distance piece.

 

[jlaird]

Jeff your link above was very intresting. thanks

 

[healeyneil]

I knew it! People have the info you need! This sort of stuff makes the forum worthwhile.
thanks to everyone. Neil

 

[regularman]

I get bearings at my local applied technology, it used to be the old dixie bearing. They have local places in most towns and they will be much cheaper than going through a LBC car parts distributor. I think I payed less than $10 a piece for mine. Those numbers are universal across all bearing manufacturers, you can get those bearings a any advance auto parts if you can find someone who has any brains, ignore any letters after the numbers, the basic numbers will give you the same bearing.