Lancia Motor Club

I need to change a front wheel bearing and have decided to leave this heavy job to the nice people at Omicron, but in order to do this I need to remove the hub upright as it is a lot cheaper to send a hub upright from here to Norfolk than it is to drive the whole car.  :)

I know I will need the tool for restraining the leaf spring and I'll need the 6 tooth tool for removing the hub nut. BUT, when I look at the workshop manual it makes reference to a puller and screw tool that are used for extracting and re-assembling the drive shaft from the hub.

The tool numbers given are Puller 8052010 and Screw 8052176 (which I gather is screwed into the threaded "female" outer end of the drive shaft.

Are these tools really necessary? I hoped the shaft would slide in and out of the hub with relative ease?

Also, what is the torque setting for the hub nut? I can't find this detailed in my workshop manual, but know that it has to be hefty.

Good luck Mike, I hope all the dismantling goes smoothly. Please post some photographs of the action!!!

                        Andy

Personally I would undo the hub nut (very tight - need a long lever and hold tool hard onto the hub) and the inboard driveshaft cv joint to gearbox and remove the drive shaft. You only need a standard puller working in reverse to stat the push out of the drive shaft. Then I would use a bottle jack (screw preferably) And put this between the spring and subframe. Then jack the spring up a bit. Using a "splitting fork" this separates the ball joints but you will need to replace the rubber covers (Omicron had these). Also look at the ball joints with no load on as they may need replacing.

I cannot understand why, when having done all the hard work, and removed the hub, you want to send it away to have the bearing put in. A local garage with a press would easily push it out for you, and replace it, which could be a much cheaper option for you.

Best wishes
Dave

Because a local garage will not have the special tool for removing that massive retaining nut on the inside of the Hub and I don't trust a novice garage to torque the retaining nut up correctly to the massive levels required by Lancia. I don't want to go through all this hassle to have a bearing with run out because somebody didn't know what they were doing. Rather leave it to the experienced hands of Omicron.

I believe the tools are available through the Lancia Club (Tim Heath). If not, the Flavia Consortium has a set it lends out for just this purpose. The large retaining nut locates on the outer race of the bearing. This in no way affects the performance of the bearing as it literally holds the bearing in position. In my view it does not need a massive torque on it. A spring clip then prevents this nut from coming loose. The more important nut is the one that holds the drive shaft in position as this puts the preload on the bearing. If you are not fitting a new nut I would recommend that you swapped the nuts from side to side, so that when you bend the tab part over, you use a new part of the tab ring. If you are anywhere near jct 22 of the M1, I would be glad to push the bearings out for you and the new ones in.

Best wishes
Dave

Front wheel bearing large retaining nut torque i.e. outer race into hub = 300 Nm
Front wheel bearing driveshaft nut torque i.e. bearing inner race = 200 Nm increasing to 300 Nm for 2000s

The former needs to be this tight to prevent the bearing spinning in the hub upright which has been seen on many cars due to the nut not being tightened correctly i.e. not providing enough clamping load. Similarly the hub nut needs to be tight to prevent the bearing spinning on hub itself.

Tools are available for the front hub but I am away till end on May.

I thought the consortium also had these tools.

As an aside I had found it very hard to get the inner tight and had always gone to my local engineering shop for a few quid. Then I realised I could tighten it in the car using the car as a vice.....

Tim

I have had to put on the hub tool, long crowbar and driven car to undo this nut on my 2000.
Brian

Brian, that is extreme!!! It obviously worked and that is what matters!!

                                      Andy

I had to buy the tool from Omicron, not cheap but worked well. Bob Adamson had to make a tool to remove the inner nut. Torques are seriously high! I have a home made tool to clamp the spring, was made for Fulvia but does Flavia as well. My Flavia 2000 may differ from your 1800. You are welcome to borrow the tools but I am in Perth quite a distance unless you happen to be nearby sometime. I am in Glasgow sometimes but usually at short notice.

Thanks for the offer Alan. I have arranged to hire the driveshaft nut tool from Omicron, but it is out on loan at the moment. My Flavia might be different from your 2000HF  in that I have the 6 tooth driveshaft nut and I think they had maybe changed to 3 tooth nuts for the 2000 series.

I've also hired the spring retaining "U"clamp tool from the wonderful people at the Flavia Consortium... God bless em!

What I need to do now is buy some length of sturdy metal rod to slip on the end of the tool (which should be like the one pictured below) so that my puny frame can exert the necessary torque to get the drive shaft not off and on.

scafold pole or large dia old fashioned water pipe works well as does an old school washing line pole....

Unfortunately, none of these items are to hand , but you might see me foraging on a building site somewhere.

So after a lot of fighting to split the top ball joint (which I replaced last year and must have been taking too many vitamins when I torqued it up) I finally got the hub upright off the car. That's the good news, the bad news is that the free play in my NSF wheel was mainly down to wear in the hub itself. The hub was so loose in the bearing that the whole hub and disc assembly fell off when I pulled out the driveshaft. The hub has worn so much that there is a raised ridge in the middle that corresponds to the groove in the bearing.

By the way, is it theoretically possible to extract the drive shaft from the hub without first splitting the top ball joint? With the Ball joints still attached, I couldn't work out any way to get the inner CV joint far enough into the engine bay to allow the outer CV to clear the hub.

More importantly, does anyone have a front wheel hub or a hub assembly that I could buy?

Here's a picture of teh worn hub. The ridge is quite apparent in this photo and stands ~0.5 mm proud.

I had this on a Fulvia. Can only assume the bearing retaining nut was not tight and allowed the bearing to move around on the two inner races. No (economic) solution but to get another hub.

Yep... I reckon it was the drive shaft nut that wasn't correctly torqued up. It came off with too much ease, but I don't really have anything to benchmark it against. Not that you can really tell, but I get the impression that the wheel bearing is the original as there is no sign of damage to the teeth on the large retaining ring that holds the bearing in the upright.

I've got feelers out for a replacement hub and some people have already responded (Thanks for your support), as yet, I don't know if anyone has what I need so I'd be grateful if anyone can offer me something from their pile of old car parts.

In desperation you might like to consider an old-time bodge that in my youth I resorted to with a Wolseley Hornet Special. This was before I had discovered the delights of Lancia ownership. The front hubs had worn yet the bearings were OK, but good replacement hubs were completely unobtainable. The solution was to wash all the grease out of the bearings and solder them into the steel hubs, clean it all up and then refill the bearings with grease. It worked. Purists would object, but what the hell!

Colin

Brilliant .... necessity is the mother of invention!!!

                              Andy

I have a used pair of hubs with discs attached in my auto jumble, which I think are s1 Fulvia @ £130 pair including UK post  

I'm told that the hubs that I need are unique to the 815 Flavia series... thanks anyway.

See video clip... Wheel bearing replaced and new (second hand but better) wheel hub inserted. Still not happy about the amount of free play that there seems to be in the bearing. Does anyone have experience to say whether this is normal. Is it possible that torqueing up the driveshaft nut will exert a "squeeze" on the inner race of the bearing that will remove this free play.

https://youtu.be/4axp-l7fGWM (https://youtu.be/4axp-l7fGWM)

Worried that I've spent all this money and the MoT man will still want to fail it!?

Mike

you need to torque up the driveshaft then the play should go away completely. 200ftlb...same for bearing retainer nut.

Thanks... that's reassuring to know. I'll aim to have it all re-assembled tomorrow (if the wife allows me time off for good behaviour) and will let you know how it goes. I've got a 1.5 metre length of pole so even an 80Kg wimp like me should be able to generate 200 lb/ft of torque.

All re-assembled and driveshaft nut on and torqued up to over 30 KgM (probably nearer to 35KgM as I was just measuring it with a 1.5 metre bar and exerting 20+ kg of pressure on the end of the bar using old bathroom scales to measure the force.

Still got free play in the wheel. Not too bad when hands held at 3 and 9 o'clock, but MoT failure free play when wobbled with hands at 12 and 6 o'clock. I've torque up as high as I dare. Tightening the drive shaft nut any more would be a problem due to the position of the nut and the locking pin on the spacer

Top ball joint was replaced last year and bottom ball joint seemed fine when it was all dismantled. Only anomaly that I've had is that I can't get grease into the top ball joint (Tried with weight on and off wheels). It took some massive amounts of force to split the top ball joint so it might have suffered some damage, but that seems unlikely to cause the amount of free play that is still in the wheel.

Tired and frustrated. Any ideas about what I might be missing?

There were some incorrectly manufactured bearings that the inner races bottomed out before the bearing was correctly "formed". Just a thought. Dave gee had this problem and being an engineer had a microscopic amount ground off the inner races but the bearing still only lasted a matter of hundreds of miles.

I couldn't face (or really afford right now) replacing the bearing again.  ???