Stephen,
On the "spacer" there is a little tiny one between the bearing
and the axle flange. Since the flange has an radius on it, where
it meats the hub, that spacer is used (inside edge is radiused
to clear the axle flange radius.
Since it is "under" the bearing, I doubt you could see the
space.
The shims are there to prevent "overloading" the bearing.
Most likely were removed from years ago, or that axle just
happened to have a dead on clearance (rare, but not impossible).
Hard to determine, unless you have a depth micrometer to measure
the bearing recess into the axle. Then another micrometer to
measure the thickness of the bearing.
Having said that, I can not recall the proper about of "crush"
that is imposed on the SIDE of the bearing in the housing. You
do not want the bearing to slide back and forth in the, hence a
little bit of negative clearance. 0.005 seems like it would be
fine.
There are TWO seals. One stays inside the axle housing when you
remove the shaft.
The Second is on the OTHER side (brake side) of the backing plate.
Early designes used seperate pieces, later design as a "single"
retainer/seal/grease catcher. Most likely there, but you didn't
realize it.
Cheers,
Tom Walter
Austin, TX.
>I just pulled my rear axles to replace the seals to fix my greasy/oily brake
>situation. Thanks to Tom's tech tip, it was very easy. Surprisingly, the
>axles came out without applying any force (they basically popped out) as
>soon as the four nuts on the back plate were removed. There were no shims
>either. In the shop manual, there are a packing grease catcher, a seal
>grease and a spacer that fit between axle case and the bearing. From what i
>could tell, they are missing. Is it possible ? There is roughly a 1mm gap
>between the bearing and the back plate. Check out the axle pics at
>http://beta.homestead.com/ssochoux/axle.html and let me know what you
>think..
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