By Tony K
I will be the first one to tell you to trust the FSM but there are times when even I do things my own way. This is one of the minor deviations I take from the FSM. I don’t use a scale to check preload on the front (or rear) wheel bearings.
Right up until I tighten the bearings down I follow the FSM to the letter. Now comes the easy part.
With a hub nut socket, tighten down the first nut as tight as you can by hand. No wrench, just grab and turn the socket by hand.
Roll the hub around and tighten by hand again. This makes sure the bearing is seated in the race.
Now add an additional 1/6 of a turn tighter with the help of a ratchet attached to your hub socket. The simple way to get a sixth of a turn is to watch a fixed point on the socket as it moves from one hub stud to the next…. No math involved
If you attached the scale and checked things the FSM way, you would find this gives you about 10lbs of pull on the scale and Toyota want’s 6-12lbs to get the right pre-load. Now I jump back to the FSM and install the star washer and outer nut just as Toyota intended.
A buddy, who is probably the best mechanic I will ever meet, taught me to do it this way. He has been doing things this way for almost 30 years and has never had bearings come back for warranty work.
Doing it this way also ensures a trail fix doesn’t need to come apart later. A little peace of mind when you are facing a 900 mile drive home from the trailhead.
