Do I have spindle issues?

This one the lines are very light and you can barely feel them.


This one the lines are deeper and a little sharp with a decent ridge in the middle.


Is this normal or do I need to replace these? Car drove perfectly normal when these were removed. Car supposedly has 30k on it.

 

From what I see, It looks normal just from the machining of the spindle.

 

Clean them up with some 800 paper to get the rust off. Then try and fit your bearings. They should slide on easily, but should not have any play when moved up and down on the spindle. I've seen way worse spindles than those!

 

yeah.. that's just the machining marks and the bearing doesn't even ride there anyways.

Unless you're talking about the machined flat near the radius in which case it looks as though the final machine work to give completely smooth journals was not deep enough to get rid of the grooves made from the rough cut.. or the other way around.. the rough cut was too deep for the minimal amount of final macgine work necessary to finish it off for the bearing.. depending on which perspective you choose. Even then though.. the bearings will flatten the high spots out without much issue.. which looks to be the case here.

Bearing inspection would be the key indicator who's winning that wear contest first though.

 

if you look at the first pic, you can see that the inner bearing was spinning on the spindle and eating away the land. look at the land, its got a groove cut into it from the race spinning.

now i see this on more spindles than not. i had a customer that drove his car like he was road racing all time. his spindles ended up like this. he was over preloading his spindle bearings.

 

Where do the bearing ride on the spindle?

Just remembered something....when I took the brakes apart I discovered the spindle nut was only finger tight on both of them. Not sure if relevant.

 

the bearings cage rides.. more like centers.. on the machined flats.. not the tapered section. The bearings themselves actually ride on the tapered races pressed into the brake hub.

amd as Joe Dirt said above.. if the preload is wrong(specifically too loose).. the race is free to spin against the machined flat and radius shoulder which will cause scoring. Not really a big deal though unless you really chew it up to the point that the bearing won't self center.. or it contaminates the grease with shavings.

Just clean it up good and swap the grease out for fresh and get your preload set up right. Then recheck it ocassionally to be sure the preload/clearance stays put.

 

So the bearing ride where the red lines are?

 

exactly. And there is no friction there since the bearings cage rides on that area. The bearings themselves roll on the aformentioned brake hub races.

 

Oh, that makes sense. So this is a cosmetic issue only.

 

The cage is the part that spaces the rollers. You are refering to the inner race or cone part of the bearing.

 

Put a new inner bearing on the spindle, if it fits without any major slop, you're good to go.

 

yeah.. I thought it was just called the inner race but was at a loss for words and actual name to descibe it when I posted earlier. I have many snowmobile bearing cages that I must inspect/maintain when I tear them apart.

Thanks for the bearing 101 refresher.

 

Don't feel bad, I've been servicing various bearing sets since I was around 10 and I can never remember what all the bits are called. Heck, I'm reticent to call any parts by name anymore after the butterfly valve fiasco.

Little tip for those of you who don't dabble in multiple types of wrench turning, there might be 30 different names for the same part in the exact same function. And then there is the name you might find in a design engineering manual to completely confuse it all up for you. Something I run into more than I care to admit to. Nice fun example, I had to replace some pneumatic parts on a Japanese machine with like a total of 6 units in the US. So I had to look up the translated part name, confer with the retailer in the mid-west who called it a different name, who referred me to a hydraulics company on the east coast, who referenced the part by a 3rd name, but he had to refer me to a pneumatics company back in Japan who had it listed under a 4th part name, and was able to supply it. When the part arrived and I compared it to the part on the machine, turns out it came from the same supplier and that was listed as a 5th name for the part. The part in question? A very special o-ring.

 

yes...the bearings roll inside the races (inner/outer) so nothing turns/rolls on the spindle itself...