Front Wheel Bearing Issue

[qroger]

The ford manual talks about the preload thing, some of which I didn't understand. Apparently you press the bearing in, then use the spacer. It seemed more complicated than my front wheel of a rear wheel drive, memory of "tighten down the crown nut til the wheel drags, then back off to the nearest hole and put the cotter key in the crown nut."
Qroger

[gdawgs]

The spacer determines how much preload(drag) there is on the hub assembly once it's back together. Thinner spacers increase the preload, thicker spacers decrease it. So if you put it all back together and it turns really hard, you need to increase the spacer thickness. You can do this by making a shim out of some thin sheet metal. If there is not enough preload, you'll need to decrease the spacer thickness. You can mill some off of the existing spacer(may need to find a machine shop). New spacers are pretty hard to come by. Usually you don't have to mess with altering the spacer, the preload is generally fine with re-using the existing one. But I have done one where it was really tight after reassembly. I did the shim trick and it worked fine.

I don't recall what the specs are for the preload, but I'm sure someone else has those numbers.