Front Brake Rotors, Wheel Hubs, and Jack Drews Axle Upgrade

Well, it's June and I'm finally back in the Man Cave. 
Wife Rhoda ordered this sign for over the garage door....  :-)

The new EBC brake rotors from TRF bolted to the front hubs with grade 8 bolts, lock washers, blue locktite, and 35 lb ft on the old torque wrench.

Here are parts for the front hubs:Timken wheel bearings, Chicago Rawhide (SKF) seals, and Mobil One wheel bearing grease

Installing the new bearing races in the hubs should be a walk in the park, right?....well ,almost.

The 6-Pack guys said to use the old races to tap in the new ones....ok, that was easy, but wait, when I trial fit a hub, something was wrong...the axle stub didn't seem to be long enough.  Ok, you sharp eyed folks see the problem right away, I only tapped the race down flush with the top of the hub ! ( Hey, I said I was a novice!)

Let's try this again.

 That looks better.

One small upgrade I made over stock was the SKF, a.k.a Chicago Rawhide, grease seal. The stock seal (on the left) is a felt type material that you need to soak with oil, while the modern seal uses a flexible lip to control the grease from flying around. Thanks to H.G. on the 6-Pack for this tip !

Here is the seal installed on the axle stub

The above photo has a spacer installed on the axle stub because this is part of the upgraded axle kit from "Uncle" Jack Drews. A set of shims is sent with the kit, and it is a trial and error method of fitting the hub and bearings against the spacer until you get the correct size shim. Bobby D has the complete "how to" for this upgrade on his excellent web site:  http://tr6.danielsonfamily.org/StubAxle.htm

By the way, the tab washers (above pix) were bent up against bolt heads before I buttoned things up!

It's pretty hard to tell a .004 shim from a .007 shim without a caliper! 

The axle upgrade requires 50 lb ft of torque be applied to the castle nut. If you have the correct shim in place, you can still spin the hub. In my case, .007 was the correct shim size.

The above photo gives an idea of how the bearings and axle spacer will live together. The .007 shim goes between the spacer and the outer bearing.

Packing the wheel bearings....my Dad showed me how to do this back in the early '60's and nothing has changed, except Dad didn't have cool gloves!

All buttoned up !  Please note: if you are using the stock axle stubs, you don't torque down the castle nut to 50 lb ft.  That is used only with the upgraded axles.  Check your shop manual for details. 

Here is a small item that I needed to find a replacement for....the plug that goes in a hole on the top of the lower wishbone. I only had one left, and this plug is used to keep rust/gunk out of the top portion of the wishbone...the lower portion has a stud that is used to hold on the spring pan. After some looking around at my local hardware, I came up with this solution:

These plugs are just about the right size, but first, I filled the cavity with wheel bearing grease....

Now the plugs go in ,and the excess grease gets wiped away.

The plugs could be a bit tighter fitting, but the next larger

size is too big.  I guess only time will tell if this works out ok, but it looks pretty good, and the grease will stop any rust from forming inside the cavity.