Wheel Bearing Mystery

While I was replacing the king pin bearings on my front axle I decided to replace the wheel bearings as well but the ones that came out were not the part number I was expecting.

My front axle is a Dana 25 with 11 inch drum brakes (cam bolt adjust, not star wheel) installed. The bearings that came out were Timken LM501310 for the cup and LM501349 for the cone. I was expecting to see 18520 for the cup and 18590 for the cone.

I looked around online and it seems the LM501310 bearings are a little thinner than the stock bearings. Would that cause the hub to ride closer to the brake backing plate? The jeep has not been operational since I’ve owned it so I never noticed if there was a problem with the brakes/hubs.

Can any of you think of a reason why those bearings would have been in there? Could I have some strange hub and brake combination? I want to make sure I order the correct bearings so I can put this thing back together.

Thanks,
-Dean

 

There were two bearing sets used on the drum brake spindles. One was an early set which were a different width and a later set. The hub is offset different to accommodate the different thickness in bearings. Basically, the inside of the hub has the step for the inner bearing in a different location. You need to use the bearing style that came with the hub. I'd put the bearings in dry just for mock up purposes and make sure the drums aren't pulled away from the backing plate or making contact anywhere to make sure a previous owner (po) didn't put in the wrong bearings. If all looks good then put in the same bearing # that is in there now. By the way, the closed knuckle drum brake spindles were all the same on CJ's in regard to the wheel bearings, so no issue there. There may be a seal difference also. With the bearing #'s you posted you should be using a National 8430s seal. Nickmil