Rear Wheel Bearings
Discussion
Chaps...
I'm after opinions on rear wheel bearings. Mine have started grumbling, about 2500 miles after they were changed - not best pleased!
I've spoken to tvr parts, and the kits they sell (this is for a disc brake setup) are Koyo. Has anyone heard of these?
I've tried looking up an SKF number, but so far no joy.
I'm after opinions on rear wheel bearings. Mine have started grumbling, about 2500 miles after they were changed - not best pleased!
I've spoken to tvr parts, and the kits they sell (this is for a disc brake setup) are Koyo. Has anyone heard of these?
I've tried looking up an SKF number, but so far no joy.
Lewis's Friend said:
Chaps...
I'm after opinions on rear wheel bearings. Mine have started grumbling, about 2500 miles after they were changed - not best pleased!
I've spoken to tvr parts, and the kits they sell (this is for a disc brake setup) are Koyo. Has anyone heard of these?
I've tried looking up an SKF number, but so far no joy.
Hi Jon,I'm after opinions on rear wheel bearings. Mine have started grumbling, about 2500 miles after they were changed - not best pleased!
I've spoken to tvr parts, and the kits they sell (this is for a disc brake setup) are Koyo. Has anyone heard of these?
I've tried looking up an SKF number, but so far no joy.
Have you checked with the rear wheels jacked up to see if there is any side play?
Have the hub nuts worked loose? Have you tried repacking with fresh grease and torquing them up again?
We're the thrust races correctly bottomed against the stepped shoulders of the hub?
Were new nuts fitted when the bearings were replaced 2.5k miles ago?
Who fitted them? In normal use, those bearings should last 100k miles or so.
Once you have done the above, the bearing kits should be available from any decent motor factor. AFAIK they are same as Sierra/ Granada .
HTH
Edited by glenrobbo on Tuesday 13th June 17:52
Lewis's Friend said:
I'm after opinions on rear wheel bearings. Mine have started grumbling, about 2500 miles after they were changed - not best pleased!
Worth talking to the person who fitted them - to fail so quickly suggests they were fitted incorrectly.Lewis's Friend said:
I've spoken to tvr parts
Some TVR parts are hard to locate and worth paying the specialist surcharge to get the right part, but these are standard Ford wheel bearings at the end of the day.Thanks for the replies chaps...
Sadly for my pride, I fitted them last time when I did the brake upgrade. I'm quite open to the idea that I did it wrong, but I'm not really sure how even I could have done. They were orientated properly, pressed in, kept nice and clean at all times and them greased up.
The hub nut I didn't torque. I just tightened it as much as I physically could using a breaker bar and scaffolding pole through the spare wheel
The only thing i can think of is I somehow mixed the bearings up so they are not matching pairs?
Does anyone know what type of sierra bearings I need if I go to a factor? TVR-parts are asking £42 for a pair with new nuts/seal etc.
I should also say that when I did them, they had new everything. So we shall see if they're loose soon.
Sadly for my pride, I fitted them last time when I did the brake upgrade. I'm quite open to the idea that I did it wrong, but I'm not really sure how even I could have done. They were orientated properly, pressed in, kept nice and clean at all times and them greased up.
The hub nut I didn't torque. I just tightened it as much as I physically could using a breaker bar and scaffolding pole through the spare wheel
The only thing i can think of is I somehow mixed the bearings up so they are not matching pairs?
Does anyone know what type of sierra bearings I need if I go to a factor? TVR-parts are asking £42 for a pair with new nuts/seal etc.
I should also say that when I did them, they had new everything. So we shall see if they're loose soon.
Edited by Lewis's Friend on Tuesday 13th June 19:29
GreenV8S said:
Mixing the races could cause problems. Or you might have managed to bruise the locating shoulder, or got some dirt trapped under the race, or just not driven it home fully.
All possibilities... I thought I'd been careful, but next time I'll be even more careful...!Can someone tell me what Sierra variant the rear hubs for a disc setup are from? Is it a 2wd only?
You can still get OE bearings from Ford dealers (at least you could last year) at about £80.00 per side. Alternatively, make a note of the number and cross-reference to one of the leading bearing manufactures eg SKF or Timken. Or shop around at this type of supplier.
Again, cheers for all the help chaps.
I still had the box for one of the bearing kits I put on, as I was storing the random oddments of material I used to press them into the hub in there, and the packaging steadfastly refuses to state the brand on it! From that I take it they are not premium...
In my mind, this totally exonerates me from messing up the fitting of them!
For info, I phoned up SKF to see if they still do kits for Sierra's, and they gave me the following part numbers:
VKBA898
VKBA897
I've found them on ebay, and they seem to cover all Ford Sierra's. Does this seem right?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VKBA-898-SKF-Wheel-Beari...
I still had the box for one of the bearing kits I put on, as I was storing the random oddments of material I used to press them into the hub in there, and the packaging steadfastly refuses to state the brand on it! From that I take it they are not premium...
In my mind, this totally exonerates me from messing up the fitting of them!
For info, I phoned up SKF to see if they still do kits for Sierra's, and they gave me the following part numbers:
VKBA898
VKBA897
I've found them on ebay, and they seem to cover all Ford Sierra's. Does this seem right?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VKBA-898-SKF-Wheel-Beari...
My two'penneth................
How did you convert to disc brakes, bearing carriers with "ears" to mount calipers from a Chimaera/Griffith or retain the drum brake bearing carriers and use "kit car" adapter plates?
If you have the "proper" carriers I think (but wouldn't put money on it
) that the bearings I linked to in my post above are the ones? Or these should definitely be ok..... rear wheel bearings
final option would be a search of the Chimaera Forums for part numbers 
i had intended to use the Chimaera carriers but when I came to fit them found out they use a different size pair of bearings, having not long fitted new bearings to my drum brake carriers I decided to use what I had and go the adapter brackets route
Home made brackets, didn't like the ones I bought they put the caliper at the wrong orientation............
How did you convert to disc brakes, bearing carriers with "ears" to mount calipers from a Chimaera/Griffith or retain the drum brake bearing carriers and use "kit car" adapter plates?
If you have the "proper" carriers I think (but wouldn't put money on it
) that the bearings I linked to in my post above are the ones? Or these should definitely be ok..... rear wheel bearings final option would be a search of the Chimaera Forums for part numbers i had intended to use the Chimaera carriers but when I came to fit them found out they use a different size pair of bearings, having not long fitted new bearings to my drum brake carriers I decided to use what I had and go the adapter brackets route
Home made brackets, didn't like the ones I bought they put the caliper at the wrong orientation............
Dear all,
I just did the conversion from drum to discs with all new bearings (and bearing houses).
First be very careful about how hard you torque the rear wheel hub nut. They should be about 300Nm and I first used a power socket wrench with an extra-long handle as I did not have a torque wrench that could do 300Nm. A few days later I went to a garage and borrowed their wrench and found that I had tightened the nut way too much. I unscrewed the nut and re-torqued it to 300 NM and that was much less than I had applied earlier. Hence it is not unlikely that you bearings failure was due to the nut being too tight.
I also bought an drum to caliper adapter plate to keep the drum bearing house and mount the caliper on the adapter. At least on the S3 that is not possible on a flat adapter. The caliper will hit the hub. The hub TVR used seem not to be the standard Sierra drum kit. I still have my adapters as they could not be used. I can post pictures of the problem if of interest.
I did call the supplier that claimed they had done 100’s of conversions using this method but when he saw a picture of the S3 rear hub it did not look like the std Sierra drum hub.
Hence I had to change the entire bearing house to one from a Sierra disc rear axle.
When it comes to bearing houses, the standard Sierra bearing house suits the 253mm disc. Vented or not depends on the caliper and disc. I happened to have two old Sierra disc hubs on the shelf and planned to use them. -But as I wanted to use the larger Cosworth rear disc, 273mm, the mounting ears for the caliper was too short.
You will however need the stub axels and the disc holder from the Sierra disc rear hub. The stub axels need to be turned down a few mill to fit the TVR rear trailing arm as the notches for the Sierra ABS unit will hit the inside of the trailing arm. It’s only a few mills so that is easy to do.
I then started to look for a Cosworth rear bearing hose but could not source them then/there so I found two brand new billet Alu bearing houses. They came with brand new bearings. Price was a bit high but the bearings were brand new and I think the bearings kit is about £80 alone per side.
However, once I got the bearing houses it turned out that the standard Sierra and Cosworth units are not entirely interchangeable. The rear side/flange of the billet bearing hose was larger than the hole in the TVR trailing arm. Not much, about a 1,2mm, but enough to need to have to bring out the grinder. I used a cylinder honing grinder to keep the hole round and take out 1,2mm.
Once the bearing hose flange fitted the TVR mounting holes did not exactly match either. Probably this is due to the holes in the cast bearing holder is bigger and gave some flex but the alu unit did not. Slight over bore for the bolts solved that. TVR…
Worth noting is that going for Cosworth bearing holder will widen the rear track as per the S4 and V8S.
Now the S3 runs standard Cosworth calipers with solid 273mm rear disks mounted on brand new billet Alu bearing holders. We have done about 5-600Km so far and no problems.
I can give more details and pictures if desired.
Kind regards
//Rob
I just did the conversion from drum to discs with all new bearings (and bearing houses).
First be very careful about how hard you torque the rear wheel hub nut. They should be about 300Nm and I first used a power socket wrench with an extra-long handle as I did not have a torque wrench that could do 300Nm. A few days later I went to a garage and borrowed their wrench and found that I had tightened the nut way too much. I unscrewed the nut and re-torqued it to 300 NM and that was much less than I had applied earlier. Hence it is not unlikely that you bearings failure was due to the nut being too tight.
I also bought an drum to caliper adapter plate to keep the drum bearing house and mount the caliper on the adapter. At least on the S3 that is not possible on a flat adapter. The caliper will hit the hub. The hub TVR used seem not to be the standard Sierra drum kit. I still have my adapters as they could not be used. I can post pictures of the problem if of interest.
I did call the supplier that claimed they had done 100’s of conversions using this method but when he saw a picture of the S3 rear hub it did not look like the std Sierra drum hub.
Hence I had to change the entire bearing house to one from a Sierra disc rear axle.
When it comes to bearing houses, the standard Sierra bearing house suits the 253mm disc. Vented or not depends on the caliper and disc. I happened to have two old Sierra disc hubs on the shelf and planned to use them. -But as I wanted to use the larger Cosworth rear disc, 273mm, the mounting ears for the caliper was too short.
You will however need the stub axels and the disc holder from the Sierra disc rear hub. The stub axels need to be turned down a few mill to fit the TVR rear trailing arm as the notches for the Sierra ABS unit will hit the inside of the trailing arm. It’s only a few mills so that is easy to do.
I then started to look for a Cosworth rear bearing hose but could not source them then/there so I found two brand new billet Alu bearing houses. They came with brand new bearings. Price was a bit high but the bearings were brand new and I think the bearings kit is about £80 alone per side.
However, once I got the bearing houses it turned out that the standard Sierra and Cosworth units are not entirely interchangeable. The rear side/flange of the billet bearing hose was larger than the hole in the TVR trailing arm. Not much, about a 1,2mm, but enough to need to have to bring out the grinder. I used a cylinder honing grinder to keep the hole round and take out 1,2mm.
Once the bearing hose flange fitted the TVR mounting holes did not exactly match either. Probably this is due to the holes in the cast bearing holder is bigger and gave some flex but the alu unit did not. Slight over bore for the bolts solved that. TVR…
Worth noting is that going for Cosworth bearing holder will widen the rear track as per the S4 and V8S.
Now the S3 runs standard Cosworth calipers with solid 273mm rear disks mounted on brand new billet Alu bearing holders. We have done about 5-600Km so far and no problems.
I can give more details and pictures if desired.
Kind regards
//Rob
sebackman said:
I also bought an drum to caliper adapter plate to keep the drum bearing house and mount the caliper on the adapter. At least on the S3 that is not possible on a flat adapter. The caliper will hit the hub.
Strange as you can see from my previous post my S3 (pretty sure all drum brake S's are the same) is converted to disc brakes using flat brackets without issue.Originally solid disc's I now have the wider calipers and vented disc's.
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