I'm just finishing up rebuilding the front axle on a case 580e (early design with 4 bolt kingpins) After assembling left front hub with new bearings there is still some play between the hub and swivel housing not much but its there. Is there any way to adjust preload on the hub bearings? manual does not mention anything about setting axial preload other than tighten axle nut to 850ft pounds. -thanks
Are you talking about vertical play at the trunnions?
No not at the trunnions but where the hub/planetary assembly meets the swivel housing where the kingpins are, there are two bearings separated by a single spacer (about 3 inches long) that sets preload when axle nut is tightened, not sure if shims can be added to this spacer to increase preload or not?
Ok, the spacer is supposed to be the right length for the bearing preload and there is not additional spacers/shims that I'm aware of. If you have slack in the bearings, there is usually something worn, whether it's the spacer itself, the race has turned in the housing, or the bearing has turned on its mount. There is nothing that says you can't add a shim though but you will need to fabricate one. Get the spindle to have a bit of rolling torque, like rolling it with 2 hands but not having to struggle to roll it. Make sense?
yup makes sense, I'll make up a shim to get things snug again. -thanks
Would you not need to make the bearings closer to each other to tighten the preload. Adding shim would make the opposing bearings further apart creating more slop.
agreed. Not sure where the excess clearance actually is. You can shim behind a bearing race, or nip a bit from the bearing spacer to create less clearance.