HELP! anyone got any information on the front hub assembly? Mine is now in bits…..

[Tom D]

Ok. So in between work stuff. Here’s my day in pictures.

Unfortunately I didn’t get back to the workshop in time to get the new bearing pressed in so I’ll pick that up after work tomorrow
I’m now in a position to provide detailed instructions on how to change a front wheel stud and a front wheel bearing ( which you’ll likely need to do anyway).

I’ll do this once I have it all up and running again it might save someone else a load of hassle.

 

[Greasemonkey]

Thanks for the pictures. Doing a repair like this at home is no problem, but on the road? Can you please tell us the thread diameter and pitch of the 41 mm screw? Do you also have a few numbers of the wheel bearings installed?

 

[MRO]

Since there had been several reports of broken wheel studs on the Ineos, I got the front and rear studs as spare parts. Interestingly, my dealer didn't notice at first that the studs were different. During a discussion about possible repairs on the road, he mentioned that they had to replace the ABS ring on the rear axle of a customer's vehicle, which was only possible with a special tool from INEOS. He didn't want to say what kind of tool they used. However, since the workshop has been repairing Land Rovers for decades, I assume it wasn't one of the standard tools. In this conversation he also made the statement about the 600/650 Nm on the front axle hub nut, because I had asked about the assembly procedure for fitting the front wheel bearings. Overall, I got the impression that it's easier to get some military plans than repair information from INEOS. The only "Flying Spanners" I can see at the moment, are the ones I would throw in direction of INEOS, because I can't do repair jobs on my own. ( Of course I would not throw spanners around, because the Stahlwille ones are expensive and I do not want to damage them. )

In my case I had a broken rear wheel speed sensor and the dealer could not get hold of the right tool to undo the hub and couldnt fashion one to deliver that kind of torque. My entire rear axle was replaced under warranty to replace a £50 part. I have seen that others are carrying these parts as spares when on expedition, good luck fitting them.

 

[Tom D]

I have all the info..

I’ll measure the locknut before I re-fit it tomorrow, The wheel bearing is, as I suspected, made by SKF, Its beefy to say the least.
The part number on the bearing is BTH 1011 DC. A google search brings up another bearing made by SKF which is BTH 1011 AB.
They appear to be Identical. The AB variant was fitted to the IVECO Daily light truck from 2005-2014. I got one from Dingbro for £60. Comparing the two side by side there are no visible differences.
The IVECO part number is VKBA 3552.

Why do I need to change the wheel bearing?
I’ll pick up where I left off yesterday. So this morning I was in Edinburgh for work, I was passing a tool shop so I popped in and got a slide hammer just in case this would work. I had already loosened the Kingpin bearings but not completely removed them at this point so I got home and re-tightened them. Then I tried the slide hammer. Not even half a mm of movement..

So back to plan A, (or was it C by this point?) I removed the kingpin bearings top and bottom and removed the whole hub assembly. After removing the speed sensor completely (it is accessed from inside the hub casing) I took the hub to a local engineer. I have known Robbie for years and knew he’d get it apart.
First thing was he couldn’t believe it was from a “car”! He’s an agricultural engineer and just assumed it was from a tractor.

He warned me straight away that the bearing would likely separate on pressing and I would need a new one. (More on that later).

So we put the assembly in the press and pushed out the hub from inside the bearing, Robbie had explained that the outer bearing case would be retained by a circlip inside, Sure enough it was. To Robbie’s surprise the hub was pressed out without separating the bearing. Normally he would have expected the outermost inner race to come off with the hub. So at this point we thought the bearing was salvageable… (possibly it was but we didn’t know what we didn’t know) The pressure was up to 10 ton before the anything moved, no wonder the slide hammer didn’t budge it.

We were then able to access the 6 Allen screws that held on the ABS ring, we removed that and straightened it and were now able to knock out the broken stud, and knock in the new one.

We re-assembled the ABS ring and pressed the outer hub back in, what we didn’t know was that inside the bearing there is a sprung metal clip that latches the two inner races together, this had popped out under the considerable pressure of removing it. The ring is designed to prevent the bearing from separating when it is pressed out, it had done its job up to a point. Had we known and squeezed the two races together slightly there’s a good chance it would have popped back into place.

When we pressed the outer hub back in it caught on this clip and squished it. Now I needed a new bearing. To be fair once we removed the bearing completely and removed the sprung clip the bearing itself appeared fine and would probably have been ok in a pinch, but for the sake of a few quid I decided to replace it.
I dropped off the new bearing with Robbie at 4:15, so he didn’t have time to refit it before the workshop closed at 5. I’ll pick it up tomorrow and put everything back together..

 

[anand]

So how was the hub separated from the knuckle/swivel? Is there a removable spindle or is it integral to the knuckle?

From what I recall it was removable; but to be honest I didn't watch the entire process carefully as we were working at the time

 

[Greasemonkey]

In my case I had a broken rear wheel speed sensor and the dealer could not get hold of the right tool to undo the hub and couldnt fashion one to deliver that kind of torque. My entire rear axle was replaced under warranty to replace a £50 part. I have seen that others are carrying these parts as spares when on expedition, good luck fitting them.

That's exactly what happened here at my dealer. Due to the defective sensor on the rear axle and the lack of the special tool, Ineos suggested replacing the entire rear axle for €1,200. Only after the workshop declined this offer and after some back and forth, Ineos agreed to provide the special tool. According to the dealer, he's the only one in Germany who currently has this tool.

 

[Tom D]

These stories are insane! Changing a whole axle for the sake of a speed sensor!!

Mind blown!

 

[Clark Kent]

These stories are insane! Changing a whole axle for the sake of a speed sensor!!

Mind blown!

Great work on the wheel stud change Tom. And for the gratuitous sandwich pic. Make sure that's in your write up.
Surprising amount of rust on your axle parts. I'd be tempted to brush some rust converter over those bare surfaces before reassembly. Not the machined faces of course.

I've heard of a few cases where IA have swapped out a complete assembly to resolve a sub-assembly issue like this. I'll take an uninformed guess that IA could supply a complete delivered assembly from their own stock (or steal one from the factory) whereas obtaining a sub-assembly that is not in spares holdings requires a request and purchase or credit adjustment from the supplier, in this case Carraro. A much slower process. Same for the special tools.

 

[Tom D]

Great work on the wheel stud change Tom. And for the gratuitous sandwich pic. Make sure that's in your write up.
Surprising amount of rust on your axle parts. I'd be tempted to brush some rust converter over those bare surfaces before reassembly. Not the machined faces of course.

I've heard of a few cases where IA have swapped out a complete assembly to resolve a sub-assembly issue like this. I'll take an uninformed guess that IA could supply a complete delivered assembly from their own stock (or steal one from the factory) whereas obtaining a sub-assembly that is not in spares holdings requires a request and purchase or credit adjustment from the supplier, in this case Carraro. A much slower process. Same for the special tools.

I’ll bet you’re right on the parts supply.
Regarding the rust I was surprised too. The rest of the chassis and axles is fine, I Lanoguarded it from new and again last year. I didn’t do the swivels though as I didn’t want to get it on the brake rotors… the difference is stark! I’ll give it a spray before re-assembly.

 

[MattA]

So after all that you still have a broken spring , I guess that’s better than the broken stud

 

[Tom D]

So after all that you still have a broken spring , I guess that’s better than the broken stud

Yes. I’m going to speak to the dealer about that as I was thinking of getting the +30mm ones anyway. It would be daft to change it out only to swap again immediately after. I hope they see sense and give me something towards the other set..
They probably won’t….