shims

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kev56

Member
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11
morning,
My 04 defender developed a bit of steering wheel wobble at low speed, checked the front wheels, driver side fine, nearside 9 and 3 o'clock fine . At 12 and 6 there is a little movement. Am i right in thinking its the top swivel pin. If so can i remove a shim with everything in place or should i strip it down and do the spring balance thing and while I'm at it replace wheel bearings ,seals etc?
 
kev56 said:
morning,
My 04 defender developed a bit of steering wheel wobble at low speed, checked the front wheels, driver side fine, nearside 9 and 3 o'clock fine . At 12 and 6 there is a little movement. Am i right in thinking its the top swivel pin. If so can i remove a shim with everything in place or should i strip it down and do the spring balance thing and while I'm at it replace wheel bearings ,seals etc?
Click to expand...
You can prove its not the wheel bearings by doing the same 12 / 6 test but with someone pressing the brake pedal. If the movement is gone then the wheel bearing is at fault, if it is the same then swivel bearings are suspect. Rather than just removing a shim I would take the top bearing out while the cap is removed to look for damage and regrease if ok, its not unknown for the bearing to collapse or rollers to be cracked so yours could be trying to tell you its on the way out. I would also set it up using the spring balance but that's just me, others would just take a shim out and do it by trial and error.
 
Oh and when you remove the cap use a jack under the lower swivel bearing to hold the hub in the same position otherwise it will drop slightly and grease / oil will leak out the swivel seal
 
Thanks for that, so if it is the bearing can i replace it and the pin without removing any of the other swivel parts.
 
The outer race will be a bit difficult to get out of the inner 'ball' with the outer casing still in place, as you usually need to knock it out with a drift from below. If you've got that much dismantled, it is not very much more work to replaced both top and bottom bearings anyway. You can take the seal off and leave it on the axle, and if the stub axle's off, you can get the outer casing off without undoing the bottom pin. After all, it's the bottom bearing that takes the weight of the car. The top one just has to hold things steady. In fact, on earlier models it was just a fibre bush at the top.
 
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