VCU Bearing Alignment (with photos)

Hippo - thanks muchos for your bearing replacement guide. My (2005, 81000 miles) TD4 has no history, so I've no idea if I'm still on the original VCU. Perhaps someone can tell me from these photos?

My main question, though, is that it looks like my bearing brackets are misaligned. Look at the position of the bolts within the brackets. How much of an issue is this? Should I loosen them and try to put them at right angles to the VCU?

:nopics:

When I fitted new bearings and VCU, I let the bearngs sit in there natural position and tightened them up, even though the feet where not square. The idea being that if I had to force the feet 'square' then the bearing was being loaded and would not have lasted too long.

Hi seraphin

My bearings brackets weren’t inline on mine for many years. A little bit out will be ok. If you can line them up by sight this is good enough. If you look at them there is a rubber surround that holds the inner part which contains the bearing. As bigrog ses just loosen the 4 bolts slightly and see if they move/turn if they're under pressure. They probably won't be if they've been like that for years. If it were mine I’d be tempted to straighten them a little, making them 90 degrees to the shaft that goes in/out of the vcu. Only to make things perfect. Sometimes they can look as if they’re out due to the rails they mount too. Lining up by sight is good enough. slightly out int too much of a problem, but easy to correct. Just make sure you don't unscrew the 4 bolts more than meeded to alter the bracket position, or it'll fall. Bolts int that long. Torque values in my vcu fred. Don't undo the bolts far enough for the vcu to to drop/hang or it'll put stress on the uj/diff/ird connections.

Your vcu is stamped GKN. Original vcu's are stamped GKN we think. Mine is. Also those supplied by GKN as replacements would be stamped GKN as well I would eggspect.

BigRog said:

When I fitted new bearings and VCU, I let the bearngs sit in there natural position and tightened them up, even though the feet where not square. The idea being that if I had to force the feet 'square' then the bearing was being loaded and would not have lasted too long.

Click to expand...

That's what I do! The rubber mounts are pretty flexible thou so can't see it doing too much harm, it won't hurt to loosen them jiggle it around to settle it into place then do them back up again!


DD

So would a recon gkn one! Can't see em grinding it off?


DD