Been watching this from the beginning. Yes I'm in Australia. I would have punched it numerous times and put loctite on it and ran it. But then, the cost and wait for parts..... well, it just sucks, then at least half the time, after waiting months for a part. It's junk.
ordered a oil pressure sending unit Aug 4th. Your cost in the States, about 30 bucks. I've got at least 100 bucks in it and STILL waiting. Didn't used to be this bad. But the Chinese flue thing gives everyone an excuse to not deliver.
I could go on and on. However, the point is, a few carefully placed punches and some loctite would have the car on the road. The worry would be next time one needs to disassemble.

 

Yeah I get your point.
But I'm at the very beginning of a full-frame-off resto, and prefer to just look at every piece just once.
Maybe I can drive it in a year, or two??

Not looking to have any oopsies or do-overs. Once it's done I'll be retired and just want to drive it.

 

OK Testing completed.
2mnyvets wins.

I should have mounted the hub and measured it before. (He was right, it didn't take that long)
So the old suspect spindle, I measured with my dial micrometer at both bearing areas.
I believe the measurements were around .844 and 1.374 IIRC

The main point was I measured 3 spindles. I measured them all vertically (with bearing load) and horizontally (no bearing load)
On two spindles I could barely measure any difference in the two 90 degree readings. Maybe 0.5 thou or 1.0 thou

On the suspect spindle it was smaller in the vertical direction only. You could feel a lip with your fingernail.
It measured 2.0 thou smaller vertically at both bearing positions, vs the horizontal position. (One of these bearing came apart with bone dry grease....hmmm...wonder which one?)

When I mounted the hub with bearings, and properly tightened it (one flat loose) my dial indicator gave me similar readings on the other two hubs, maybe 3 thou "wobble", in both orientations.

On the bad hub I got the same 3 thou horizontally but got 12 thou vertically. (I actually tired it at different tightnesses too, from too tight, to too loose, and it still always failed)

Since the vette shop carefully assembled my rear T/A arms, by the grinding shim method, to 1.5 thou bearing clearance, this seems like waaay too much.

Since the hub is only 3 inches in diameter, and the rotor is 6 inches in diameter, that would be a wobble of 24 thou at the edge of the rotor. Hmmm...
Chevy's chassis overhaul manual spec is 1 to 8 thou "wobble" vertically when checking bearing clearance. I am unclear if they mean at the rotor edge, or the wheel edge, but in either case, my spindle flunked the test!

Suspicions confirmed.

I also measured the "runout" of the hub separately, rotating it, and got 3 thou runout. Hoo-ray for small successes! (Maybe the evaporust cleaning helped there?)

I am not sure exactly what kind of brake issues this would cause, but perhaps this wobble is one of the reasons for "lip seal failure"?
That hypothesis would require a lot more testing....

 

That's not altogether uncommon. I've seen it before. I'd probably put 3 small drops of loctite evenly spaced. Or a thin film of RTV. Just to keep the inner race from moving. You'll be able to get it off, no problems and you'll feel better about it.

If you're not comfortable with that, just buy a used one off ebay.

 

Thanks Leigh. I never expected that type of movement. I would have thought that t I would get vertical movement, but that the tapered bearings would guide the rotor and limit the wobble. Now I know differently.

 

I measured 2.0 thou slip-fit bearing clearance in both bearing positions.
So when the bearing "rocks" it moves 2.0 thou. at each bearing position.
Since it was both bearing positions the hub movement doubles to 4.0 thou
I am not quite sure why this did not yield 4 thou at the hub edge.
The radius from hub centerpoint to bearing is 1.5" and to hub face is 3.0" so perhaps the movement doubles again to 8 thou at the hub face.
That almost makes sense.
I believe the remaining few thou is the bearing clearance, since they are adjusted "loose" and "backed off one flat"
I estimate that "looseness" as adding only 3 thou wobble for a properly adjusted bearing..
It was not nearly as much as I previously expected.
That totals up to the 11 thou wobble, as I measured, at the hub edge.
(When I intentionally mis-adjusted the bearing it only went up or down 1 or 2 thou, 3 tops. I did get near 6 or 8 with virtually all looseness gone from the bearing setting, but the moving race was starting to bind up.)
Because the rotor has twice the radius of the hub it doubles again to 22 thou at the rotor edge.

Moral:
Measure your spindles. If they are worn no amount of adjusting the bearing is going to eliminate the wobble at the brake rotor edge.
Even 1 thou or 2 thou wear is very significant. And it does not even feel that bad with the fingernail test.
Front Spindles should measure within 0.5 - 1.0 in size in both directions, both vertically (loaded direction) and horizontally (unloaded). Most of the wear is on the bottom side where it supports the cars weight.