Oil Fed Rear Wheel Bearing Drama

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Originally Posted by 86mud

Are you running bigger tyres ie over a 285/75R16 on an 8" rim with more than a 25mm offset? This can add stress to the bearing and require tightening of the wheel bearing nut/s slightly above the factory torque settings otherwise you can get some bearing play at stock torque settings.

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It is my son's Defender 90 and he is running 255/85 R16 (same diameter as 285/75 R16) muddies on standard 7" Boost alloys that are ET +33 offset at the moment. He has bought new rims waiting to be fitted that are 8" R16 with an ET -15 so they will sit 48mm further outboard on each side (I tried talking him out of it!!)

When we converted to oil lubed bearings, we also converted to the double hub nuts with no spacer between the bearings as per earlier Defender models. When we set it up, we torqued the inner nut to 50Nm, rotated several times to settle then backed off 90 deg and then tightened to 10Nm. Fitted the lock washer and torqued the locknut to50Nm.

I have little experience setting up wheel bearings so what would you suggest as slightly above factory torque? 12Nm for the second tightening of the inner nut? I have a 5-25Nm torque wrench but it is a 1/4"drive which will have to be adapted up to the 1/2" drive hole of the 52mm hub nut socket.

Have you checked the diff breather is not blocked ?

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Originally Posted by jboot51

Have you checked the diff breather is not blocked ?

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Good call. It was checked when we set it up about 12 months ago. I wouldn't expect it to get blocked given that it hasn't seen much off road in that time but it is still a possibility. And yes it is the first item on the hit list when we get stuck in to it this weekend.

We do have insects here that like to crawl into little tube holes. A recent example was a 30hp outboard cooling water tell-tail that had to be unblocked...native bee was fished out. A few weeks later, it was blocked again..same story.