Quote Originally Posted by newfsmith View Post
Since you adjusted the hub I assume that you checked that the axle wasn't bent or broken, that you had the right number & size of bearings, the cups & cones looked OK, and both locknuts were tight. I'm suspecting that at some point in this hubs life it's been serviced and a damaged dustcap was replaced with an eyeball fit, or that some of the spacers were replaced but not the correct size. I want more clues, please.
I was not supposed to overhaul the hub (beyond the scope of work), so I was trying to avoid opening it up. By adjusting it, I knew that the locknuts were tight and the axle wasn't broken. I first suspected a bent axle, but inspecting with the hub together indicated the axle was straight, and that was confirmed when I did open the hub and roll the axle on the bench. Here are the most telling clues. I opened the hub and looked at one cone. It had normal wear: a ball-track line about 2 mm thick with obvious wear but no significant pitting. The 2nd cone had very abnormal wear, and a type of wear I'd never seen before. Instead of the usual narrow ball-track, it had wear over it's entire surface and some pits towards the edge of the inner surface, far from the normal wear area. I looked inside the hub where the cone with normal wear had been, and it looked normal, nine 1/4 inch ball bearings. But what did I see in the other side?