2021 Heritage 200 with busted front wheel bearing

[clearmysix]

Hey everyone,

Just trying to see if anyone else has seen early failures of their front wheel bearings.

I have 30k miles on the truck. Has spacers for about 2k miles, did the brake downsize (MEX SPEC), and noticed decrease in braking - which I thought was normal.

However it wasn't normal. Ultimately the truck was hard to align and then when we looked further into the problem it was determined that one of the front wheel bearings was bad.

It ripped up the brake rotor (see pic) and once replaced the braking is amazing once again - as is the alignment.

Not sure if anything I did previously made this happen - but it happened around the time I changed the brakes. Happy to have it all working well now.

 

[bloc]

Hey everyone,

Just trying to see if anyone else has seen early failures of their front wheel bearings.

I have 30k miles on the truck. Has spacers for about 2k miles, did the brake downsize (MEX SPEC), and noticed decrease in braking - which I thought was normal.

However it wasn't normal. Ultimately the truck was hard to align and then when we looked further into the problem it was determined that one of the front wheel bearings was bad.

It ripped up the brake rotor (see pic) and once replaced the braking is amazing once again - as is the alignment.

Not sure if anything I did previously made this happen - but it happened around the time I changed the brakes. Happy to have it all working well now.



View attachment 3491315

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Extremely rare. How thick were the spacers? When you downsized brakes did you keep the original knuckles?

 

[TeCKis300]

Is it possible the mex spec calipers were offset from the rotor causing lateral loads on the bearing?

 

[tbisaacs]

Can’t wait for the wheel spacer doomers pile on

 

[doru]

How much more tire do you gain with brake downsizing? What would be the largest you can get on the heritage without downsizing.
I guess this why you did it.

 

[pdavis49]

How much more tire do you gain with brake downsizing? What would be the largest you can get on the heritage without downsizing.
I guess this why you did it.

Looks like they downsized to a 17" wheel with a 285/75 r17 K02 and used wheel spacers to get the tire away from the kdss. That would be my best guess.

 

[clearmysix]

Looks like they downsized to a 17" wheel with a 285/75 r17 K02 and used wheel spacers to get the tire away from the kdss. That would be my best guess.

I went from a 18 tire to 17 tire. 285/70/17 load range c. Appeared immediately after downsizing brakes (like same day). The Mex spec brake rotors are paired to Mex spec calipers.

Prior to doing to smaller brakes I was running spacers to fit the 17 inch Toyota Australia rims to my USA HE.

 

[pdavis49]

I went from a 18 tire to 17 tire. 285/70/17 load range c. Appeared immediately after downsizing brakes (like same day). The Mex spec brake rotors are paired to Mex spec calipers.

Prior to doing to smaller brakes I was running spacers to fit the 17 inch Toyota Australia rims to my USA HE.

Darn! I think @TeCKis300 might be on to something with his theory.

 

[clearmysix]

Extremely rare. How thick were the spacers? When you downsized brakes did you keep the original knuckles?

1.25. Removed after 2k miles when the smaller brakes were added.

 

[clearmysix]

Darn! I think @TeCKis300 might be on to something with his theory.

I don’t think so. I think it was happening before the downsize - but was more apparent after. Still have the Mex spec brakes working fine now. Will update if it fails again.

 

[bloc]

So it was just mex spec calipers and rotors? No new knuckle?

 

[clearmysix]

So it was just mex spec calipers and rotors? No new knuckle?

Correct. Just calipers and rotors.

 

[bloc]

I personally doubt the caliper/rotor offset theory, and here’s why. The rotor fits into a narrow slot in the caliper. Significant misalignment would give very clear grinding and clearance issues. Any misalignment that fits within the narrow slot should easily be accommodated by the pistons on both sides of the rotor floating.

@clearmysix is there any chance the large central hub nut was messed with during your brake swap? This would have required removing the center dust cap so it’s unlikely to have gone unnoticed.

 

[clearmysix]

I personally doubt the caliper/rotor offset theory, and here’s why. The rotor fits into a narrow slot in the caliper. Significant misalignment would give very clear grinding and clearance issues. Any misalignment that fits within the narrow slot should easily be accommodated by the pistons on both sides of the rotor floating.

@clearmysix is there any chance the large central hub nut was messed with during your brake swap? This would have required removing the center dust cap so it’s unlikely to have gone unnoticed.

It’s possible. I forgot to mention I also changed to the Mex spec brake dust shield to match the smaller rotors - if that is what you mean.

 

[bloc]

It’s possible. I forgot to mention I also changed to the Mex spec brake dust shield to match the smaller rotors - if that is what you mean.

Which would have required removing the bearing.

If those things aren’t torqued using the very specific procedure in the manual I could absolutely see that ruining a bearing.

 

[TeCKis300]

I personally doubt the caliper/rotor offset theory, and here’s why. The rotor fits into a narrow slot in the caliper. Significant misalignment would give very clear grinding and clearance issues. Any misalignment that fits within the narrow slot should easily be accommodated by the pistons on both sides of the rotor floating.

@clearmysix is there any chance the large central hub nut was messed with during your brake swap? This would have required removing the center dust cap so it’s unlikely to have gone unnoticed.

I tend to agree with you with the added info.

 

[bloc]

@clearmysix did you have the same shop do your bearing swap as did the brakes? If so you might want to look into whether they are aware of those torque values and the procedure.

 

[TimCFJ40]

I’d bet the shop didn’t properly torque the hub nut after removing the hubs to change the dust shield. Or you are very unlucky. My factory wheel bearings are about to hit 275k miles… so 30k is very surprising.

Most of the time, when unusual stuff happens, look to the last thing that was worked on. If the two are related, you can almost guarantee there was an error somewhere in the last service…,

 

[clearmysix]

I’d bet the shop didn’t properly torque the hub nut after removing the hubs to change the dust shield. Or you are very unlucky. My factory wheel bearings are about to hit 275k miles… so 30k is very surprising.

Most of the time, when unusual stuff happens, look to the last thing that was worked on. If the two are related, you can almost guarantee there was an error somewhere in the last service…,

Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Started the day of the brake downsize. Something happened at that point and this makes a lot of sense.

Thank you all for your input.

 

[bloc]

Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Started the day of the brake downsize. Something happened at that point and this makes a lot of sense.

Thank you all for your input.

In that case they probably didn't tighten it enough. The bearing depends on the big nut in the middle to hold the whole hub/bearing/axle assembly together. If it isn't tight enough, the opposing races that make up the hub bearing can separate and cause exactly what you had going on.

Conversely, if they had put it together and it waited a few thousand miles to wobble around, it was probably way too tight and the extra tension caused the bearing to deform.