[Healeys] Front wheel bearings

[HealeyBN7 at aol.com]

4th power of diameter would be good - if the spacer/shim scheme did indeed  
add dia/stiffness to the stub axle.  I do not believe that it does.   The 
bearing/distance piece assembly has end play to the bearings to  begin with, as 
advised by instructions in the manual.  And, the spacer  (distance piece) is a 
slip fit to the stub axle.  It is not hard  coupled to the stub axle.  
If you were to model this assembly with finite element analysis, the  spacer 
would not actually be 'coupled'  to the stub shaft for the purposes  of added 
stiffness in the model.  So, it would not add to the bending  stiffenss of the 
stub axle.  It serves only as a 'distance piece'.
 
IMHO
 
Dave
 
 
 
In a message dated 7/24/2007 7:52:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
britcrs at gmail.com writes:

Gotta  speak up. Jag E-Type uses the exact same bearings as the BJ8,
MGB, and  probably others and does not use spacers and shims. I suspect
that given  the front end weight, the loads on the Jag exceed the loads
on the Healey  or MG. I'm away from home and my Jag manuals but I
suspect that they are  set up just like a gazzillion 'Merican cars that
use tapered rollers  without spacers/shims and tighten untill they drag
then loosen till the  cotter pin lines up. Almost never fails.

That being said, I believe  that the spacer/shim scheme properly
executed increases the effective  diameter of the stub axle and
decreases the bending stresses which will  increase their fatigue life.
(S=MC/I where I is the area moment of inertia  and is proportional to
the 4th power of the diameter as I  recall).








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