Practically Classics Forum

A slightly peculiar problem perhaps: I had been suffering from a regular squeak from the offside rear hub. Those with superior experience told me that it wasn't the bearing. My father provided the solution; the wheel nut studs fouling on the brake cylinder. When the hub was apart we could not make these foul by hand - put everything back together and take a test drive and the problem persists, repeat activity with new brake cylinder (as I did a few times) and the result was the same. the car passed an MOT in this state and was left virtually untouched for a year (I didn't particularly want to drive around in a squeaky car) and this year I decided to tackle the problem head on. I asked the garage to look into it. Their response was twofold: 1 the cylinder was wrongly located (I knew this already but it was proving very hard to keep it in exactly the right position as the circlip really is a very inferior locating device) 2 "your bearing is shot sir" (this latter despite the fact that the car was unaltered and virtually unused since it left their garage last year - I am very used to fishy comments like this from garages!) So I took the hub apart to replace the bearing. This revealed the shocking sight of the threaded end of the axle casing, the thread had been mauled to bits by the nut and locker tab washer spinning around uselessly. The halfshaft - itself thankfully unscathed - had obviously been holding the whole hub assembly together!
Has anyone else encountered a similar situation?
I am presuming a new axle casing is on the cards as the thread is integral? How much should I expect to pay?
Thankfully all of the gubbins (less the bearing) are okay and I intend to re-use all of the axle mechanics - fingers crossed!

Welcome to the forum!

Had a similar situation on a Tandy Fox (same rear backplates and cylinders as your car) a few years ago, though in that case the thread was salvageable and we whipped the axle down the same day as the strange symptom manifested itself.
At least yours is well served for parts by a big club and an ever bigger network of specialists across the world, we would have had to make a new axle tube for the affected side or replace entirely if the van had been one with the Salisbury type of axle.

Thank you for your reply John.
I am amazed at the audacity of the garage - there is no way all of that damage was done in the four miles and 12 month sit in the garage that the car experienced since its last MOT! The cause is still a mystery, if the garage is to believed about the bearing then the real cause was something previous to that - perhaps the bearing (and more importantly axle thread) were victims of that?

Can anyone with experience of these things tell me; is there any way of building the hub back up again with the thread in this state? Is there an alternative way of keeping the inner of the bearing in place on the end of the axle casing?

OK, reading through this again, I'm wondering about two separate issues which I think must be addressed separately even though they are physically in close proximity:
Firstly, the brake cylinder/wheel stud issue from the cylinder POV:
The wheel cylinder would tend to fall outwards sufficiently to catch on the domed ends of the wheel studs if there were even a small amount of looseness in the horseshoe clip. I know that these can be a real sod to fit snugly but the issues that often cause them to be inefficient at their job are (mostly) these three:

Some folk slide the clip in with only the central lug in the groove, erroneously believing that the lugs at the ends of the clip should fit above the cylinder rather than in that groove. It may sound like an obvious thing, but some folk would tap the things in half heartedly and assume that this must have been correct!
Also, inexperienced fitters would often abuse the clips to the extent that their curvature would be reduced as a result of all of that bashing at them with inappropriate tools (FBH, etc..). This would of course cause the clips to be slack relative to the backplate instead of pushing firmly at it, so allowing the cylinder to drop forwards sufficiently to hit the studs.
Finally; some of the horseshoe clips supplied with aftermarket (and otherwise perfectly serviceable) cylinders were simply too thin! ISTR that Brown Brothers' own brand cylinders came with such clips but they were cheap enough and reliable otherwise so we'd tend to use genuine BL clips and keep the Brown Bros ones to use doubled up in the next car that needed the job doing.

And from the POV of the axle tube, the bearing, the halfshaft and their relative positioning:

The only thing I could remember ever having caused a similar problem with the loose lock washer and the mullered thread that you found was a case of the hub casing being intended for a slightly different car (1500 vs A-series for example, but I don't recall the precise differences in this area between MK2 A40 Farinas, earlier Spridgets, different eras of Minors and later Spridgets).
The casing that had been fitted in that case was intended to take a deeper bearing than the casing that would have been original to that hub/axle/halfshaft combination, so with the slightly shallower bearing fitted, the nut reached the end of its thread before the lock washer had been nipped. I did wonder at the time whether a second washer would have provided the solution but even if so, it wouldn't have been ideal.

I think that the hub must have been almost tight enough to nip the washer or the cylinder would if anything, have been further away from the hub, not closer to it, so I'd consider the possibility that the hub and the cylinder fitting must both have been compromised to cause the problems in this case.
And no, four miles would be very unlikely to have caused thread damage which tends to suggest poor assembly work at some previous time.

Regarding the question of rebuilding the threaded area of the tube; I would, if it were my own car so could be closely monitored by me at all times, fit a new nut, washer, bearing and oil seal IF the thread slightly further along were less badly chewed but if the car were someone else's I wouldn't attempt to reuse a damaged thread if the remaining good thread were shorter than its counterpart on the nut.
Someone, somewhere is sure to have a known good axle standing around, one they don't need and would sell at a fair price to help a fellow enthusiast.

If it's like the ones on B series cars, the LH side has a lefthand thread, I wonder if the garage didn't know this?

Thank you once again for your input John.
I always fit new circlips on each assembly - I consider it a small price to pay for being safe! You could argue that the backplate is too thin for the job as, while the slave cyliner is in place, there is plenty of wriggle room. There should be a nut (or two) really to hold the cylinder properly in place.

With regards the thread: in the end I bought a second hand axle case from Andy Jennings. Several hours of cleaning stripping and sorting and I have reassembled the diff, hubs, halfshafts, brakes and replaced the axle in the car. having done all of that I tried to bleed the brakes and the bleed nipple on the (brand new) cylinder won't take the thread! So I am going to put the whole thing to bed for a while whilst I wait to regain my sanity!

The garage have obviously either been negligent or daft; criticising their own work and failing to spot the big problem when they must have seen it when they inspected the bearing.

I am very disillusioned with the ability of mainstream garages to do any work on classic cars. Another garage recently flooded my engine - presumably the mechanics had no idea how to use a choke! They also seem to believe that the same standards apply to modern cars as to classic ones. Someone told me a few years ago that my exhaust was inadequately supported when it was supported in exactly the way set out in the drawings!

If only I could get certified to carry out my own MOTs...

It's not just classics modern garages cant diagnose. I had a broken top mount diagnosed as play in the anti-roll bar drop link. If I had the time i wouldn't ever take a car in to a garage but sometimes they are necessiary, even if it takes them 3 attempts to fix a problem.

I know exactly what you mean about the clips' tendency toward being sloppy even when they're fitted. In some cases - such as the cheap Duco brand ones I mentioned the other day - this is because the clips are thinner and less "springy" than genuine Lockheed ones and in some cases, even including o/e parts, the clips are too flat and need to be given a touch more curvature before they're fitted.
Then there's the possibility that the backplate has wasted slightly through corrosion in the area where the cylinder is located, this not helped by the likelihood that at some point during the car's life there may be brake fluid getting in about at the backplate as well as slackness and associated vibration causing the clip to eat away at its surrounding chunk of the backplate.
At one time, the clips could be bought in large packs of varying thicknesses so that the fitter could experiment as we used to do with the Duco ones and with a bit of fettling, achieve a much tighter location. Moprod did packs under their brand name and there were others, long since gone from the shelves of what little remains of our publicly accessible network of motor factors.

But rest assured, the clips shouldn't be at all easy to move once they're fitted. A little intentional slackness in that area would have saved hours of wasted time spent having to cut off the old ones.

And sadly, Terry's bang on about the inability of some mechanics in garages these days to do their job properly. This does indeed apply just as often to those working on modern stuff.
I don't get why this state of affairs has come about, some say it's a result of ever tighter labour times being allowed but a quick look at ICME would in fact demonstrate that - if anything - times are greater now than they were just twenty years ago and some of the simpler tasks, that used to keep us on our toes back then, are now sufficient to allow any half way decent "old school" mechanic or engineer to do the job twice over and have a three course meal at the half way point!
We can teach the up & coming generation of engineers how to work safely, how to communicate effectively, how to use their tools and even that common sense is the most valuable tool they possess. But can we make the lazy buggers work both quickly and correctly? Sadly no, because we're not allowed to be even remotely assertive, angry, furious or even physically abusive with the students now.