Its been a long time since I have done one of these. Is there any gotcha on this job. Use a bearing packer to fill grease, tighten not too tight, not too loose. Anything else?

 

There is a procedure for tightening wheel bearings and I will post more tomorrow after I look it up but it involves roughly tightening the castle nut to about , sorry I forget, but it involves tightening the nut to a certain value while spinning the wheel , then backing off and retightening to a lower value. It does not involve backing off to the first place the cotter pin can be installed but sometimes use valve shims under the nut to get it right.
I will look this up tomorrow at work and post the procedure tomorrow or someone else might beat me to it.

 

GM says to pack with grease, fill cavity with grease, assemble, then tighten to 12 ft-lbs while turning the wheel, then back off until just loose, then retighten by hand while turning the wheel until hand tight, then back off to the nearest spot that the cotter key goes in. Paul79 posted that for me a short time back.

-Justin

 

Strange and ironic, but I tore mine apart this past weekend and will be repacking them this weekend (long week). Agree with statments above based on reading/learning. Other tips or hints anyone?

 

We worry about our rotor runout but part of the runout is bearing clearance. At one time the specs called for tightening the nut to 12 ft lbs and backing off to the first cotter pin hole and that gave you 0-.007 clearance Later the specs changed to.001-.008. That is quit a spread if you are trying to get the rotors to as close to 0 as possible to prevent brake pumping.
A new proceedure is to torque the nut to 15ft lbs while spinning the wheel forward to the direction the car would travel. Back off the nut until it is loose. Again while rotating the brake rotor in the direction of forward motion tighten the nut again to 50-60 inch pounds. Install the cotter pin. This gives .0005-.001 clearance.
I know the cotter pin doesn't line up. For me one did and the other didn't. You need to take a valve spring shim and install it between the nut and the wheel bearing washer.. In my case for the second nut I drilled another hole in the right location.
Do not back off for the cotter key or you are introducing too much play.
This is a bit of trial and error.
If the total allowable brake run out is .010 and the wheel bearing has .008 that doesn't leave much for the brake rotor runout.
My worst rotor is .003 and grabbing the rotor and wiggling it will not make it exceed that value.
It take a bit of fiddling but it is possible.