2016 F53 Front Wheel Bearing Failure at 10,000 Miles

[DryCreek]

Count the number of bolt holes. Eight, not ten. Maybe it's an F-450 Class C, not an F53 Class A rental.

Ooops, never mind. I zoomed in - that's a 22.5" tire. Those are probably eight bolt wheels on the 26K chassis. What tire brand does the larger stripped chassis normally ship with? Goodyear? Michelin?

Originally Posted by IggyTech

Mike I also saw that the tire brand was wrong.
If that is a new motorhome with 10,000 miles where did this old rusty rim come off of and that is not the type of tires Ford puts on their F-53 chassis.
Something is fishy here.

[ramblerguy]

Originally Posted by MoMule

I hope they inspected the right front wheel bearings also. If not, they are due to fail shortly. Ford F53 motor home chassis are built in Mexico and shipped by rail. They are secured to the rail car but vibrations induced in rail travel causes very small movement of the wheel bearings. This movement is confined to just two or three rollers at the bottom of the bearing and the bearing cup. After hundreds if not thousands of miles of travel on the rail car these bearings get severely pitted and will prematurely fail.

My dad said they had the same problem with trucks during WWII. The wheel bearings would "Brinnell" during train shipments. In his case, his Army company's trucks were shipped from their training location in southern Arizona to Tennessee. They routinely replaced bearings as soon as they arrived at their destination. I don't know if the problem was resolved or if they just made it a practice to inspect bearings after a long rail trip.

"Brinnell" is a hardness test for materials. A specific tool is pressed onto a test sample with a specific force. The amount of indentation is a measure of the hardness. When a bearing is damaged in this manner the bearing race shows the indentations caused by the rollers or balls. Of course, if the bearing is run to failure, the marks may be destroyed.

[Will travel]

My suspicion is the same as Iggy Tech ,its been in a flood
Flood damage has compromised Bearings and grease
New tires at 10.000 miles more concern .
Something not right here .
Question is it a rental or did you buy a rental ?

[ThePowells]

That is also a problem with the delivery of new cement mixer trucks. The mixer bowl has to be rotated even when delivering a new or moving an empty truck. It will also create flat spots in the bearing ring around the bowl.

[twinboat]

Originally Posted by Will travel

My suspicion is the same as Iggy Tech ,its been in a flood
Flood damage has compromised Bearings and grease
New tires at 10.000 miles more concern .
Something not right here .
Question is it a rental or did you buy a rental ?

Flood would show rust. Hard to miss.

[twinboat]

Originally Posted by ThePowells

That is also a problem with the delivery of new cement mixer trucks. The mixer bowl has to be rotated even when delivering a new or moving an empty truck. It will also create flat spots in the bearing ring around the bowl.

A steel band around a 9 ft barrel isn't a tapered wheel bearing.

[twinboat]

Originally Posted by ramblerguy

My dad said they had the same problem with trucks during WWII. The wheel bearings would "Brinnell" during train shipments. In his case, his Army company's trucks were shipped from their training location in southern Arizona to Tennessee. They routinely replaced bearings as soon as they arrived at their destination. I don't know if the problem was resolved or if they just made it a practice to inspect bearings after a long rail trip.

"Brinnell" is a hardness test for materials. A specific tool is pressed onto a test sample with a specific force. The amount of indentation is a measure of the hardness. When a bearing is damaged in this manner the bearing race shows the indentations caused by the rollers or balls. Of course, if the bearing is run to failure, the marks may be destroyed.

Million of cars are shipped by train. BMWs from Charlston is one that comes to mind.

[JoeSR]

In defense of MoMule & Ramblerguy.....

In a materials engineering class (taken in the 70s) I remember hearing about wheel bearing failures due to vibration in transit. It was happening on a high end European car shipped by train.

My memory isn't perfect. So, I looked it up. It is called "false brinelling". If interested, see p10 of this pdf >>>https://www.applied.com/static/catal...ingfailure.pdf

[Stripgear]

Page 20 here shows a better picture for tapered roller bearings:

https://www.timken.com/pdf/5892_Bear...20Brochure.pdf

[Mekanic]

Originally Posted by MoMule

You don't have to just take my word for this. Talk to any mechanic with many years of experience. This happened to me. Bought a new Dolphin 434 on a Ford F 53 chassis in 1994. At 25,000 miles I pulled the front wheels to repack the bearings. Both inner and outer bearings on both wheels had two pitted rollers and each bearing cup had two pits matching the roller spacing. I just was lucky in finding this before total failure.

I just can’t buy into this theory. To believe it i’d Have to think back when 99% of the RWD cars had this same bearing design and that any vehicle shipped by rail would all have damaged bearings and cups as they rolled onto the dealers lots.

Also the less preload on the nut the less rollers will be in contact with the cup.
( remember these are TAPERED bearings)
More preload would equal more rollers working rather than less.

The rollers are Just like a spoked wheel they all share the load, but only if they are ALL equally tight.

[Roadfrog]

Just Googling "F53 wheel bearing failures" brings up more than the average number of returns. Apparently a significant issue

[Sweetbriar]

Originally Posted by Roadfrog

Just Googling "F53 wheel bearing failures" brings up more than the average number of returns. Apparently a significant issue

Probably not the best data source to establish a trend.

"Spartan Wheel Bearing Failures" - 395,000 results
"Freightliner XC Wheel Bearing Failures" - 381,000 results
"E450 Wheel Bearing Failures" - 238,000 results
"F53 wheel bearing failures" - 165,000 results

Mean while - "UFO Abductions 2018" - 3,810,000 results.

[triplewide]

Originally Posted by Sweetbriar

Probably not the best data source to establish a trend.

"Spartan Wheel Bearing Failures" - 395,000 results
"Freightliner XC Wheel Bearing Failures" - 381,000 results
"E450 Wheel Bearing Failures" - 238,000 results
"F53 wheel bearing failures" - 165,000 results

Mean while - "UFO Abductions 2018" - 3,810,000 results.

Best post all year!

[Roadfrog]

Originally Posted by Sweetbriar

Probably not the best data source to establish a trend.

"Spartan Wheel Bearing Failures" - 395,000 results
"Freightliner XC Wheel Bearing Failures" - 381,000 results
"E450 Wheel Bearing Failures" - 238,000 results
"F53 wheel bearing failures" - 165,000 results

Mean while - "UFO Abductions 2018" - 3,810,000 results.

I realize you were tongue-in-cheek with your post, but actually, F53 failures were far more than your made up numbers in comparison. I also realize that 'trends' might be askew, but when you actually look at the posts in the forums referenced, you'll find that it SEEMS F53 failures are more prevelant and relevant. I could care less regardless, I just found it "interesting". The F53 Chassis forum here at IRV2 has MANY posts about this issue. failures at 7k miles, 10k miles, etc.

AND do NOT mock alien abductions. I've never been the same since mine.