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Post by 76bradley714 on Apr 3, 2011 20:30:41 GMT -5
Ok, so I have (what I was told) a 76 Bradley, but most everything on the car points to 1969 so I've been ordering parts accordingly with so far, no issues or problems. For the past few weeks, I have been trying to solve a braking issue because while hitting the brakes, the front passenger wheel was locking up, and it felt like the the left had no braking power, pulling the steering wheel to the right (even after replacing the hard and soft lines, bleeding everything, and adjusting the play evenly throughout the drums). After gutting and finding what I thought was the problem - a leaky wheel cylinder which was soaking the shoes - i replaced it, and the shoes, but while reassembling the front drums, I noticed that the inner bearings had quite a bit of play of about 1/16th of an inch. I went and picked up a new inner bearing at autozone (I asked for the 1968 front inner bearings, SET4 type) but when I went to put them on, it looks to be within a few thousanths of an inch too small for the spindle, so now i'm completely confused. is there supposed to be a little play in the inner bearings? I'm 99 percent certain these were installed stock from Bradley, so I'm almost thinking that it's normal, but I don't want to be driving it around and have the bearings blow. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you Bradley gurus!! - Jonathan Attachments:
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Post by thehag71 on Apr 4, 2011 6:01:33 GMT -5
It may be a 1976 Bradley, but it could be just about any year VW chassis underneath it. Check the VIN number to make sure. Except for a Super Beetle, they just won't work without lots of modifications to the Bradley body. Not a Bradley issue, but a Vehicle issue in general. You shouldn't have any noticeable play in your wheel bearings. Inner or outer. How did you come to the conclusion that it was your inner wheel bearings? If you were moving the bearings around while the drums were off of the vehicle, then yes you should expect some "play" in them. Once everything is torqued down to the proper specs, then no, you shouldn't have any noticeable "play." (unless you are using a dial indicator, with the drum and wheel attached, and then should only have .001-.005 in. If you had the drums and wheels installed and tightened properly and you had any "play"(without a dial indicator) then you should probably look at outer and inner bearings as the culprit as it is difficult to determine which would be the culprit. Check the Clymer vw beetle book 1961-1979 , pages 214-215 and it gives you the proper procedure to check and adjust.
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Post by thehag71 on Apr 4, 2011 6:20:45 GMT -5
According to the Clymer manual though, "When the axial play is near .005 in, very slight axial play can be felt when rocking the wheel by hand. This is permissible as long as the bearings are not noisy." I wouldn't guess that wheel bearings were your issue, but rather the leaky wheel cylinder not applying the proper pressure to the brakes on the driver side of your vehicle. More pressure to the passenger side than the driver side will cause it to pull to that side every time. Grease the old wheel bearings, clean the brake shoes with copious quantities of brake cleaner, sand the brake shoe linings with 150 grit sandpaper to remove any glazing, ( don't breathe the dust! Wear a respirator.) Put a new wheel cylinder on the driver side, bleed the brakes, torque everything to spec, and drive it is my suggestion.
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Post by darrenz on Apr 4, 2011 21:39:20 GMT -5
To get a no pull. Stop you need to adjust both sides evenly. If pulls left adjust right pads out more
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Post by thehag71 on Apr 5, 2011 3:11:36 GMT -5
I just saw the other post with the pictures of your spindle and bearing. The bearing is definitely not the correct one for the spindle. There should not be that much clearance between the bearing race and the spindle. You need to get the correct bearings before you drive it. Wish I could be more help about correct bearing, but you can look up the chassis VIN number and that is gonna tell you what year it should be, then buy a set of bearings for that year.
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