[T3] Wheel Bearings

Joe Plowick III gtixpress at gmail.com
Thu Jul 18 20:21:09 PDT 2013


Well it turns out that the bearings did fit.  I just had to do some more
polishing of the spindle to get them to go on.



Joe Plowick
'69 Type 3 Sqareback
'02 GTI 337 Edition


On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Joe Plowick III <gtixpress at gmail.com>wrote:

> Yea, both bearings were undersized on the spindle which I thought was odd.
>  The spindle looked okay, and both were actually coated in the original
> cosmoline (or whatever it's called) to preserve them.  I cleaned that stuff
> off and lightly sanded the spindle to ensure that it was clean of any rust,
> etc.  I'm going to try the second spindle tonight just to see if there is a
> difference.  I know they have real close tolerances, but for both bearings
> to not fit seems to tell me the issue is with the bearings.
>
> Joe Plowick
> '69 Type 3 Sqareback
> '02 GTI 337 Edition
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Jim Adney <jadney at vwtype3.org> wrote:
>
>> On 18 Jul 2013 at 7:56, Joe Plowick III wrote:
>>
>> > The bearings that I got were a MasterPro brand, part numbers were A1 and
>> > A15.  The outers cost $5.19 each, and the inners cost $5.59 (or
>> > vice-versa).  I'm using a set of NOS '73 spindles.  I tried cleaning up
>> the
>> > bearing surfaces with a little fine grit sandpaper and WD40 just to
>> remove
>> > a little bit of surface rust that was on there.  There was just no way
>> > those bearings were going on there.  In fact, I almost got the inner one
>> > stuck on there when test fitting it.  I'll look up the numbers for a '73
>> > Beetle and see what those show.  Maybe I'll try a different brand too,
>> but
>> > everything else I was finding was at least twice the price.
>>
>> I don't recognize those numbers, so they're part of some proprietary
>> system. Were the inner and outer BOTH undersized on the ID? Check the
>> shafts to make sure they don't have a nick somewhere that would have
>> upset a bit of metal around the nick. The correct fit is a very close
>> slip fit, so if those spindles have been sitting on someone's shelf
>> for 40 years, they have a pretty good chance of getting bumped a few
>> times.
>>
>> Those prices are quite low. Twice the price would not surprise me, so
>> you may have to pay that to get the correct bearings, if the shafts
>> are not the problem.
>>
>> For others that are watching this thread, if you have a '68 you have
>> to be careful because the inner bearing changed its ID in mid-year,
>> and the early inner bearings were smaller. As Dave said, VW used the
>> same (late style) bearings on early Rabbit rears.
>>
>> I have both versions, plus the seals, etc.
>>
>> --
>> *******************************
>> Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
>> Madison, Wisconsin, USA
>> *******************************
>>
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>
>
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