rear wheel bearings on van

When I purchased my van, I removed the rear wheel bearings and inspected. Replaced one of the bearing because it had some pitting. I repacked all bearings and re-installed. The last oil change I noticed the rear wheels had some wobble (play). I ended up tightening the bearings up without inspecting. Now on this oil change, I noticed the back wheels are loose again. WTF?

I will remove and inspect again. Is this normal on a van or what? I would like to switch to rear disc brakes anyway, so I'm guessing that will require new bearings with the different spindles correct?

Anybody got a rear brake set up for sale?

There's a two stage tightening process on them...

Tighten to 25 ftlb while spinning the wheel, this is the crucial part, might not be seated properly so haul it back and forward a bit to make sure it ain't gonna go loose... then when you're sure it's seated...
back it off, then tighten the nut finger tight..
then install the cap and pin.

If you just torque it to 25ftlb and don't make sure it's seated, it can go loose on you, also if you don't back it off and finger tighten it, it will wear funny.

That's pretty much what I've always done with bearings like this on all cars...except I don't use a torque wrench. I seat the bearings till the nut has no tigtening left, then back it off to a little over finger tight.

How much play are we talking anyway? I regard just barely enough to feel, a faint tunk-tunk if you really haul on it, as "normal", at least mine have been running fine for 8 years like that with repacking every couple and they haven't got worse or made noise. I think when it gets to about 1/16-1/8" of play it's bad, but less than that is fine.

More than that. It's a pretty good wobble.

They make no noise to speak of, but my van is pretty loud anyway as it is gutted.

Odd, well Simon posted that's he's stripping a couple of vans right now if you wanna find a pair of good stock hubs/spindles.

http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=22528

Thanks for the link. I may be contacting him.

I have another spare van 1990 model up in my barn. I've been wanting to steal the whole rear axle from it as one of my lower shock mounts on my rear axle is about halfway stripped out. I'm just running a longer than stock bolt in it right now to hold until I get the swap done. It's too cold to be messing around on the dirt floor with no power in a well ventilated barn! I may just have to rough it out though.

The only reason I can see them come loose is if you've under/overtightened them or you didn't properly seat the bearing cups in the drum.

I redid the rear brakes on the van in 03 and made it so the drum slid off, never had to touch wheel bearings or tighten them, :thumb:

Disc brakes use car bearings so you won't need to reuse your van units.