Originally Posted by oledoc2u
any modification has it good and bad points, and most that are modding on here know that already. Unless someone is hanging their wheels outside of the wheel well, I doubt any harm will come to our wheel bearings. Most aftermarket wheels are lighter, and offset usually less than 30mm is marginal. You are correct in your findings, but I believe the german engineers have done their homework here. Those racing, track racing, have more to worry about, than those of us going straight. But we are putting more load on those bearings than the everyday driver, so they should always be inspected more frequently than the manual recommends.
well i don't know about those 'german' engineers, but i'm an american one in this industry and know the math involved and the results of screwing with offsets. for example, moving the load on a tapered roller bearing to the inside by 0.05" (a few mm of offset) is typically enough to seize it within a relatively quick time. prolonged use of a seized bearing can cause the cages to separate spewing the guts inside the machined bearing enclosure causing it to have to be THOROUGHLY cleaned or in most cases replaced. the other result is that it will "turn" as one unit. keeping reading to find out that that does.
Originally Posted by JaneBridges
I learned my lesson about wheel spacers. That being said, I've had to have the bearings on the back passenger wheel replaced twice, which had nothing to do with spacers. The first set of bearings went bad very quickly. I had to have my axle shaft replaced as well. This is on my race car. I don't make that many left turns, so I'm real surprised that these bearings have gone bad.
The race car is put up for the winter, so we'll see how it feels this spring when I take it back to the track.
Jane
twice? did the same shop do the service on the second one that failed? did they repack it or replace it both times? did they clean the housing or replace it both times? that's not surprising that the axle shaft had to be replaced. its common on independent suspensions that when the bearing seizes and "turns" as a unit, it turns the axle shaft into a torsion bar.
