Hub question


  • Hub question

    My passenger side hub is really tight. I'm still updating my suspension and am at the point of putting it back together. I had found I had a turbo tube on the passenger side and a na tube on the driver side. I now have the correct na tube on the passenger side and have encountered the binding issue.

    I've taken both hubs apart, repacked the bearings, and changed the wheel seals. The driver side went back together with no issues. The passenger side is not cooperating. In order for it to move freely, the spindle nut is barely threaded and the rotor looks really close the caliper bracket, almost to the point of rubbing it. Here's what I've checked so far:

    Pulled the hub back apart to make sure I wasn't stupid and put the bearing in backwards. It was in correctly.

    I took the bearing by itself and made sure it went on the spindle completely. It did, but was snug. I checked it on the turbo spindle and it was snug also, but once seated, was loose enough to slide forward and back easy, but not loose enough to have play.

    Went back to the na tube and slid a scotch brite over it to clean the spindle. Looked like there was a little bit of overspray or something on it, tried the bearing again and it felt good like the turbo spindle did.

    So I put it back together and seemed much better when I had the nut hand tight, but as soon as I torqued it down and started backing the nut off the original problem persisted. Before it starts spinning easily, the nut is almost off of the spindle.

    One last bit of info I can give you is this picture. The hubs had two different wheel seals initially. The small one from the 'problem' hub, the bigger one from the driver side. My replacement seals are both the larger ones.

    http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s…psdca9d71a.jpg

    So is there something I'm missing or overlooking here? Both new seals went on fine. My brake system is the na system. No dual piston turbo calipers, rotors or anything. The only thing I did was swap back to the original na tube.

  • #2
    The early turbos also had bolt-on brakes, but there seems to be two different castings requiring different seals, the major dimensions are all the same, assuming they are all 5-bolt the brakes will interchange

    What likely happened is someone got a complete early turbo hub/spindle on one side to replace the damaged non-turbo one

    If you are having binding issues, verify that both hubs are having the same problem on the same spindle, first thing to do is narrow down the problem to hub or spindle -- my guess will be the kingpin is bent

  • #3
    Swap hubs side to side and see if the problem follows the hub or the spindle.

    How do the bearings look?

    Did you forget the large washer?
    5.3 LSx Z31

  • #4
    Thanks for the replies. I went with the theory that sometimes the simplest solution is the right one and got it figured out. It looks like this hub needs to have the internal wheel seal, not the external. It was causing the clearance issue. I swapped back to seal I pulled out and tried again and everything is as it should be now.