rear wheel hub

[printhead]

 Tony, what do you put in there for grease? I suppose any wheel bearing
grease is going to do the job, right?

I have always wondered about this
as I also have the 30 to 50,000 mile experience with wheel bearings.
Ticks me off. I am also reminded that the famous (to me, anyway) book
that I bought back in the 80s, "The Water-Cooled VW Performance
Handbook", advocated re-packing brand-new wheel bearings before you
press them in.

I know that the wheel bearings in our cars (and any hub
of this design) are very prone to installation errors, ie., applying
pressing force through the balls, thereby denting the races. I am
careful to install them correctly, but still not getting what I consider
satisfactory longevity out of them.

Thanks in advance.

Tom LH
1995
90q

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2013 16:39:43 -0600
From: Tony Hoffman
<auditony at gmail.com>
To: Mark Rosenkrantz
<speedracer.mark at gmail.com>
Cc: Mitchell Segal
<mitchellsegal at gmail.com>, "quattro at audifans.com"

<quattro at audifans.com>
Subject: Re: rear wheel hub
Message-ID:

<CAJM_R3rFid0cYx91zbyTEhU4fVc67UG2RfP3dXovt+mhfeBZ6g at mail.gmail.com>
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text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

The design of the bearing is such that
hp, suspension, etc do not have a
significant impact (no pun intended).
BTW, the first A4 out here in the
states was teh 172hp 12V V6. HOwever,
there were A4's with as little as
115hp overseas.

However, if you pull
the seals, you will see the reason I put additional
grease in.

On a
side note, I did both rears for a friends B5S4 stage3+, four years
ago
and about 60k miles now. He had been doing them at 30k like
clockwork until
then. No issues since, and plenty of track
driving/potholes.

We (long time Audi guys) have seen this for years,
including the early
4000/5000's. Same issue, same solution IMO. Though,
they don't fail as
early, generally lasting 80k+.

Tony

On Sat, Mar 2,
2013 at 8:49 AM, Mark Rosenkrantz
<speedracer.mark at gmail.com>wrote:

>
Those rear bearings were designed for a stock 150? HP early 1.8T. They
kept them right through the B5S4... Same bearing and hub. So add in more
power, lowered suspension, bigger rims with wider tires, track use or
track tires.... It's not uncommon to have to replace them every 30,000
miles.