10/8/09 - Another wheel bearing!

I bet you are getting as tired of this as I am.

We went to TV4x4's annual club rally at Oxley's Shaw last weekend. We had a great time and we felt we were especially competitive getting the punches this time. We were much more organised with the winch, setting it up before we entered the hazards and therefore it was much quicker and smoother all round. Perhaps it is getting near the point where we need to enter a proper challenge event.....

However, on the way home we began to suffer extreme "Jimny Death Wobble". This started at between 30-40 mph and rapidly descended to 20 Mph. As Oxley's Shaw is pretty close to home we decided to keep on driving, but at 20MPH it is a surprisingly long way home!. By the time we got back the wheel bearing on the passenger side was red hot and shaking the wheel revealled a "clunk clunk".

The bad news is that there are no aftermarket wheel bearings in the country at the moment. The SKF kits are not due in until Spetember (according to SKF) and the Blueprint ones are not available until the end of August!

My needs are greater than this so I had to re-mortgage the house and buy a Suzuki one. This turned up on Friday and cost almost £60 just for the bearing! Inside the pack is a Koyo DAC4168W bearing so I will try and talk directly to Koyo to get some more as they are the same manufacturer as the Kingpin Bearings.  I notice from my records that I changed this same bearing in June last year so it looks as if they are currently lasting me around 12 months of off-road driving.

Winching backwards down a hill to get a punch

 Below: Winching out of a deep hole (hidden behind car)

 Below: Looks like another club member has caught the Jimny bug, didn't manage to catch up with him to get the low down but here are some pictures...