I recently purchased two sets of disc brakes. One set was off eBay and supposedly out of a junkyard and off a '70 GS455, the other was out of a local junkyard and I pulled it off a '72 Pontiac Grand Prix. When I pulled the rotors off the spindles I found a nasty surprise. On the '70 GS set the left spindle had been previously dressed after bearing failure. On the '72 GP the right spindle had been previously dressed out and was in even worse condition. Both of these spindles had obviously been on the road for some time after their outer wheel bearing surfaces had been damaged and "blended" back to a more normal shape. Here is my question. How many of you are riding around on spindles that have had previous bearing failure? Has anyone had a second failure occur? Have many of you trashed a spindle after this damage and how many of you would consider these two scap? Is there any real fix like resurfacing by a machine shop and an using a different wheel bearing with a smaller i.d.?
Do you have any pictures of some of these that have had the bearing failure and been dressed? I wouldn't know if I was looking at a trashed spindle if it was staring me in the face, so I would appreciate some eye candy if you have a picture. Thanks,
It depends how bad it is. I had a bearing go bad and start to weld metal to the spindle. I caught it in time, and used emory cloth to gently get rid of the small bits of metal welded to the spindle. It's been fine ever since. Basically, I didn't know anything was wrong until I heard grinding. Had to drive about 6 miles after that. There wasn't a lot of metal to deal with, but I could not get a new bearing on. I sanded, tried to slide the bearing on, sanded, etc.
The spindles are cast, machined and heat treated. I would never, ever use one that has had bearing failure. You don't the amount of heat damage to the area since it can be seen. Get a new one. www.opgi.com and several others sell new ones for $75-85. Very cheap when compared to a spindle failure and resulting accident.
