Replacing Rear Arm Bearings

[David]

Just to add, When removing the rear arms on the 4x4; Undo the drive shaft nut before you jack the car up & then follow the instructions for a standard 2 wheel drive arm. Then as your lowering the arm the drive shaft will come out of the hub & the arm will come off the car.

Apart from the different hubs between the 4x4 & 2 wheel drive, the arms appear to be identical.

Hopefully that will help someone out.

[nige]

i just know that if i ever get these arms off they are going to be elongated.

For a quick solution is it possible to buy reconditioned arms? or can i send mine away anywhere to get reconned?

thanks

[Cromptons]

Does anyone have any spare shims? Or does anyone know dimensions? Just rang the dealers and its £16 per shim!"!!!!

(stripped my trailing arms and no shims fitted....)

[themildbunch]

Thats a crazy price.. I bought a pack of shims from the dealers a couple of years ago and they were nothing like £16!..

I have some but I think the general consensus if if they weren't there when you take the arms of you'll probably be ok just putting the arm back on.. I know I did and there was no play - night and day difference after changing these bearings though... very satisfying job.

[Defender110]

but I think the general consensus if if they weren't there when you take the arms of you'll probably be ok just putting the arm back on.. I know I did and there was no play - night and day difference after changing these bearings though... very satisfying job.

Agreed!

[mat_fenwick]

I don't think they sell the shims separately, but £16 for a pack (described as wedges(!) last time I bought some) sounds about right. The tolerances in the arms are likely to be much larger than the bearing tolerances, so you'll probably get acceptable if not identical preload on the bearings just using whatever size shim (or lack of) as was originally fitted. The bearings don't seem to fail from wear anyway, rather lack of lubrication after water ingress.

[white exec]

Realise this topic has had a caning, but a thought occurred...
If aim is to be able to deliver either grease (or heavy oil) into contact with the OE-type bearings, would the above fairly straightforward mod do it?
- drill and thread a hole through outer casing and through the plastic spacer tube
- insert a drilled-out bolt; this would keep the plastic spacer in position and prevent it from rotating
- screw a grease nipple into the hollow bolt

This would seem to be able to deliver grease/oil to the right place.
Unsure of exact direction of position of the added widgets, to allow access to the nipple.

BTW, did anyone ever find sealed SKF bearings that would fit this job?

(I hope Vanny might not mind too much that I used his coloured diagram again...)

[Kaapelimies]

Yes, that's similar to what's done in my 4x4. Good thinking, this is a simple way to do it!

[RobC]

The late AlanS of this parish used to advocate the grease nipple approach. I was never convinced that his design got past the issue of the plastic sleeve blocking the grease though. Yours does.
However I’d say there might be a danger of swarf getting into the bearings unless this mod is done with everything stripped down..?

[white exec]

My RR arm has started to creak intermittently (only when going over a large undulation, slowly), so the bearing job will need doing at some point this year.

Our old '89 RD RR bearing went home when taking a small hump-bridge rather fast in Germany one year, and I re-bearing'd both sides. Not a lot of fun, but the car did another 100k miles without issue.
_________

Remember that the original Mini had a similar arrangement, and (until it was simply deleted) a grease nipple in the end of each shaft. These were always visible from the outside of the car, iirc. Wonder what the bearing/lube arrangement was?

edit: Just found it...
See minispares.com, Radius Arm Repair Kit, GSV1125.
Even shows the nipple on end of the shaft, which would (I guess) have routed grease internally to the two (and later one?) needle bearings.

[panky]

The plastic tubes on the Mini were not very successful, they easily collapsed and the radius arm ended up full of grease. Earlier cars has a steel (or maybe aluminium) tube which worked a lot better.

[DLM]

The late AlanS of this parish used to advocate the grease nipple approach. I was never convinced that his design got past the issue of the plastic sleeve blocking the grease though. Yours does.
However I’d say there might be a danger of swarf getting into the bearings unless this mod is done with everything stripped down..?

Have never added the grease nipple - though it's quite some time since last did this job. Need to get it done soon though, and have spare arm for the rhs off-car with bearings fitted and ready. Looking for a non-ABS lhs arm to complete the pre-job prep.

The stripdown approach is the best approach to my mind for this job on a car whethere adding lube point or not - especially when opportunities to get the job done are limited (lack of somewhere to work). This is a lot harder now than in the days when finding a BX in a scrapyard was not a problem.

[Defender110]

Yes I have fitted grease nipples to my TZD but it isn't straight forward. You need to get grease through into the middle of the spacer tube and fill this with grease which spreads to the outer bearings. If you just drill the outer drop arm and fit a nipple the grease just fills the arm and does not get to the bearings. To solve this problem I drilled straight through the drop arm casing in the centre of the arm and then carried on through the spacer tube. I then tapped the outer drop arm to allow a grease nipple to be screwed in. Before fitting the nipple i fitted a small tube cut to the right length to allow the tube to be trapped between the tightened nipple and the spacer tube which allows the grease to travel through the tube into the spacer instead of leaking straight off into the hollow arm.

[white exec]

Could be much the same arrangement as the hollow bolt suggested.
Without a drawing, I think we were guessing where your small plastic tube went.

Did any suitable SKF (etc) sealed bearings ever get found?

[Jaba]

My solution to this was not to drill and fit grease nipples but to fill the internal black plastic tube with grease mixed with gearbox oil during the bearing renewal job. This has the advantage of keeping the bearings lubricated with the semi fluid grease mixture and when wear does eventually take place you will see the lube leaking past the seals which gives plenty of notice of the need to strip it all down again.
I don't even have a grease gun any more.

I think really that the bearings are just too small for the job they have to do and their life is therefore much shorter than it could be.