Bigger bearings on a c1500?

[Orpedcrow]

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[Hipster]

I disagree. The roller bearings in our trucks aren't rocket science and have quite a bit of tolerance. But if you have other evidence and experience, I'm open to listening.


Back in the day it was very common to replace just the bearings because the races didn't wear as badly. You can put new bearings on an old race or old bearings on a new race and not have problems. Putting an old bearing on a different old race was a recipe for noise until it wore in, and then it could be too loose.

When Japanese metallurgy got good the price on bearings and races dropped to the point that there was no need to reuse races. It was nearly as cheap to get a whole new set. However, there are still manufacturers that will sell bearings and races separately, especially when you get into larger or more expensive bearings.

I have to fight this fight pretty often, dealing with supply chain for aircraft engines. We have one vendor who labels their bearing sets "Each", when they're really sets. It should have stated in the contract that they label them "Set". Now every time we receive a shipment they get sidelined for being labelled incorrectly and I have to tell the warehousers to go ahead and accept them with a pen-and-ink change to the label. The problem is that if the vendor decided to be a dirtbag they could start shipping us just the bearing without the race, and it would be labelled correctly, but we'd be overpaying for the bearing and we'd have to buy the races separately. The other downside is that mechanics don't think of bearings and races being separate, so we'd have more downtime because mechanics would forget to order the races.

Noise, well there's your sign, they are precision machined pieces that shouldn't need to bed in like a set of frictions. Been through it when I dealt with incorrectly packaged stuff from a bearing house when the labeling wasn't spot on. I can imagine aircraft manuals getting very specific which might be different then the "field fix". They have their own 3 letter oversight committee they have to answer to. I was referring to microscopic galling. Dealt with Harley engines which the crank sits on double timkens, a re-do would require another complete engine tear down and the endplay damage you may have created, Same type of bearings in a diff call for pre-load, if I had a sloppy Bridgeport or lathe I'd do sets if for no other reason than accuracy. Something low speed I might try a get-by depending on the situation. Bearings go by inner id and races by outer , od, and have always been available separate or a set for specific applications as far back as I can remember. I've never looked through bearing catologs to see if a certain inner can be matched with a choice of od races to make up different sets but kind of doubt they are making thousands of different roller diameters.. I've dealt with a diff guy that deals with Koyo bearings who's actually made comparisons and mic'd Koyo and Timken rollers, not the same size, so mixing brands is not the best thing. Not that the Koyo's are bad they just might not center up on a Timken or other brand race or vice-versa

Things we did 30 years ago and got away with, myself included, are not so acceptable today in this modern it's not my fault sue happy world. Diy is one thing, if charging money, You're presenting yourself as "the expert" and some will literally drive it till it won't drive no more and turn around and sue you for whatever the end result is. Collision , fatalities, what-have-you and how much money/equity you got.

 

[Hipster]

I worked for a national chain-store auto-service department early in my career. I was "low-man on the totem pole" and I knew it.

We'd get a new rotor/hub with bearing races to replace a rotor that was too thin, and new inner and outer bearing sets. I was told to knock the new races out of the new rotor/hub, so that I could put the new races that came with the bearing set into the rotor/hub.

I thought this was insane...but that's what my boss wanted, so that's what I did.

And there was no way on Earth we'd have replaced bearings with each brake job. Our customers (farmers especially) would have had a hissy-fit at throwing away perfectly-good bearings. Later on, the shop was ordering "import" bearings which at that time were coming from Eastern Europe, I think. Not China...yet. So the used bearings we'd have been removing would have been better than the new ones we'd have put in.

I remember bearings from one of the slavic countries. I mean really it's not new info you should replace both pieces and here we have the O.P on his 4th set probably no doubt a combination of both method and doing half the job and people want to pipe up like others are wrong by saying replace everything and be done with it already.

Not @Schurkey, This is where I say you can be doing something for 30 years and getting away with and it doesn't mean you were doing it properly. Info is more readily available these days and not only is the consumer more educated but the tech needs to be up to date as well. There's a reason a tech needs to re-cert. In the collision world ASE suspension and brakes cert is a joke, You want comprehensive take the I-Car class and get the Cert. I've been through both.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I've never looked through bearing catologs to see if a certain inner can be matched with a choice of od races to make up different sets but kind of doubt they are making thousands of different roller diameters.

I have, and yes, you can mix and match bearings and races for different applications. I played around with bearing sets a few years ago to try and put a Mustang 5.0 brake rotor onto a Mustang II spindle. I made a bearing set that matched both, but found the space between the bearings was narrower on the rotor than the spindle and it wouldn't fit.