d21 wheel bearing replacement

[EstoMax]

hey all,

i just bought my first nissan truck! I am a 5 year owner of a 95 240sx ka24det but since i just bought a house, i needed a truck and a dd, so a dark green 94 d21 4x4 with the ka24e and 5spd transmission fit the bill perfectly.

anyways, the brakes on it were worn. in fact one pad was worn below 0.. it had chewed 2 mm into the brake rotor... silly previous owner.

I am replacing the rotors on this, and as part of that job i had to remove the hub on the front and the wheel bearing. Now my question is, the fsm wants me to tighten the wheel bearing lock nut to 72 ft lbs (and then loosen it to 0). i need some sort of a pitch fork tool. is there a tool like this in local auto stores that you can get? I am thinking of going to HD and building one.. lol

cheers for input!Marko

[RT22]

I have always tightened bearings until it makes rotor hard to spin and back off JUST enough to free up rotor and reinstall cotter pin so nut never backs out. it has to be snug but rotor has to spin with very very small amount of drag, should be able to spin but not allow rotor to move side to side.

[seang]

72 ftlb preload sounds a little high to me. It's been awhile, but I thought my Haynes said 27lbs preload, and then an extra 1/4 turn in. Are you sure that's what it says?

[EstoMax]

its 27 lbs for the 2wd one, for the 4wd it says 72 ft lbs, then loosen it to 0 and measure the torque required to turn it, then tighten it again by 15-30 degrees and find the difference, which is the preload.

I ended up tightening it as much as i could and then backing off to 0 and adding 15 or so degrees so it is not super tight but tight enough to not jiggle.

Marko

[Desert Rat]

The tool you need is a spanner wrench...I've never used one though when I had the stock front end. I used a thin screwdriver and a mallet to torque the hub nut and then back off about 1/6 of a turn. You want a little bit of resistance when spinning the rotor, but not much, and if you have any "chuck" in the bearing with the wheel on, it's not tight enough.

It's one of those jobs you do by feel after you've done it a couple times.