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19
H I G H - P E R F O R M A N C E U P G R A D E S
STRONGER FRONT AXLE KITS, TR3, TR4, TR4A, TR250, TR6
"You've Got to Read This If Pedal Drop Is a Major Problem in Your Life..."
You have had this experience even if you aren't a racer. You might be driving your car very hard on a twisty mountain road
with a rough surface. You come up on a turn, and you hit the brake pedal. To your surprise the pedal goes to the floor on the first
pump, and it only starts to slow the car on the second pump! Why the hell do your brakes fail when you need them most? Unlike
many questions of life and death, this is one that actually has an answer...
Have you ever looked at your front stub axles? You see these when you remove hubs to replace bearings or brake discs or to
repack the bearings in grease. They're not particularly substantial pieces of steel, your stub axles. So picture your front wheels
taking bumps and putting pressure on the stub axles during hard cornering. What are your axles doing? They're flexing, i.e.
bending, of course, and when your stub axles flex, what happens to your hubs and especially to your brake discs? They wobble
back and forth, and the brake discs push the caliper pistons back into their bores in the caliper bodies. All right, you've been
driving for a few minutes on that mountain road, and your caliper pistons are pushed back into the caliper bores, meaning that it is
going to take a whole master cylinder full of Castrol Girling Crimson Clutch & Brake Fluid, or whatever brand you use, to bring
the caliper pistons back out of the bores. That is why your pedal drops to the floor when you need your brakes the most!
So, how is this problem solved? Various people have tried to solve it in various ways. The most successful method was
discovered, or rediscovered, by Uncle Jack Drews, a Triumph racing guy. Uncle Jack put his keen mind to the problem and
figured out what was happening, as described in the previous paragraph. Then he came up with the idea of putting a spacer
between the two front wheel bearings on the stub axle to stiffen the whole assembly, and this method worked very well. Then,
Uncle Jack took the whole thing a step further. He made up beefier stub axles with race-quality hardware, and he also installed
the spacers on those.
To go a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of this solution, the spacer abuts on the inner races and sits between the inner and
outer front hub bearings, and the bearing clearance is adjusted with shims rather than by tightening and loosening the slotted nut
which holds the front hub onto the stub axle. You may think it is difficult to adjust bearing clearances with shims, but in this case,
it is very easy, and learning this skill on your front wheel bearings will give you the knowledge you need to utilize shims in other
assembly work.
There are two ways to go on this. You can buy a spacer kit and use it on your original stub axles. This way is fine for normal
road use, although you may prefer to go all the way. "All the way," in this case, means that you will fit the beefier stub axles
along with the bearing spacers. Many of us want to make our Triumphs as wonderful as possible, and this modification will put
you one step closer to making your Triumph into a Ferrari...
If you decide to fit the spacer kit or the beefier stub axles and spacers, you aren't going to want to fit them along with crappy
wheel bearings! TRF realized a few years ago that our customers wanted original-equipment Timken bearings and not no-name
bearings made by companies without Timken's quality record. Timken bearings are more expensive, but sometimes you just have
to pay more if you want the very best...
Part No.
Description
No.Off
List Price
Your Price
Add/Cart?
Stub Axle,
stock replacement
2
47.95
39.90
Uncle Jack's Spacer Kit,
front hubs; includes wheel bearing
1
169.95
139.90
spacers, adjusting shims, and installation instructions
Uncle Jack's Stub Axle Kit;
includes one pair of uprated stub axles,
1
359.95
299.90
spacers, adjusting shims, hardware, and installation instructions
Timken Front Wheel Bearing Kit;
includes Timken wheel
2
139.95
119.90
bearings, grease seal, and bearing cap
HP661 SHOWN WITH
RFK1443 TIMKIN FRONT
WHEEL BEARING KIT
Uncle Jack's Stub
Axle, note how much
thicker it is than stock
stub axle.
