So I’m in the final assembly of a total rebuild on a HP Dana 30 for my 88 XJ. I go and and put the axles in, which are stock 1310 series, bolt in and torque the new Timkin 513107 bearing and torque to 75ft lbs, earring still rotates but stiff like a new bearing is. Put the axle washer and nut on and torque the axle nut down to 175ft lbs and then realize that o can’t even rotate the hub at all by hand, I have to put a breaker bar either on the nut or through the studs to turn the hub/axle. I pull it back apart and check that the stub axle is not rubbing on the dust shield or binding in any way, assemble it back tup and the same thing. Thinking it might be a bad bearing, I assemble the other side and have the exact same results. Pulled it apart and cleaned the Face of the stub axle that indexes on the bearing with a scotchbrite pad to make sure there was no buildup on it and that still didn’t help. I started torquing it up on 10lb increments and it is fine until I hit about 80-90lbs then it get to tight to easily turn by hand. Has anybody had this happen before? Is this normal? I think I have only changed one of this style of bearings before in my life and don’t remember it getting this tight. Any ideas?

 

I do not know whether you are able to easily remove the new bearings to take these measurements, but in the past, I have compressed bearings and measure with a micrometer,
comparing old with new. This was for a very specific reason, but unless the old bearing is showing visible signs of wear, the compressed thickness is usually within .001"

This may give you a clue

 

Are you sure that's an '88 D30?

 

Having just done a total rebuild on my HP D30, I can say that the torque on the mounting bolts had little to no effect on the effort to rotate the hub. Something doesn't seem right. If you have the original parts, it would be a good idea to do some comparisons of them dimensionally.

 

Unknown year on the axle housing and the axles are newer as they are the larger series of axle unjoint. From what I have read, all D30 stub shafts are the same, this is a stub axle to bearing clearance issue only.

I agree the mounting bolts should affect the stub/bearing torque but I tried just in case the knuckles were warped in some way. Everything I read last night is which bearing you use only should be determined by what rotors you have. My XJ is an 88 and the previous owner just had the front brakes done so I I went with the 88 style bearing in order to use the same cast rotors instead of buying new composite rotors. I have 2 sets of used bearing off newer axles and the axles that came out of the housing that I need to clean up. I am first going to pull a stub axle off my extra set and try that stub in the new bearings and torque it up and see what happens.