You may have been following my search for the source of the incessant road noise. More on that in a bit.

My Question
Can you seat the bearing races too far in when reinstalling the half-shafts?
Using a piece of wood as a drift, I slowly and evenly hammered the races back into place. The rear wheels feel very tight now - much tighter than before. This concerns me. I'd think they would work themselves loose if they were too tight, but I dunno. This is my first time putting an axle back together...

I could pull the rear drums and use my axle puller to loosen the races slightly if this is a serious problem. I don't want to do that if it is not necessary

Background
I serviced and re-packed my bearings this morning. Not having new rear bearings on hand, I had planned to swap both short-shafts & bearing sets with a pair taken from one of my donor axles.

When I pulled the my car's half-shafts I found only a thinned black slime in place of the bearing grease. After removing and thoroughly cleaning the bearings, I found no sign of nasty wear on the races or rollers. I had planned to install the 65 halfshafts, but I could see some wear on the races and some pitting on those rollers, so I shelved that idea.

I considered that the heavy rumbling/scraping I had been hearing was attributable to the lack of grease and since these bearing looked as good as new, I went ahead and re-packed them. I also applied a thin coat of grease to the races and inner seals, and put the whole thing back together.

The result? No change. Still got the horrid noise.
I've positively ruled out the driveshaft bearing and the #1 U-joint. I've tentatively ruled out u-joints #2 and #2, as well as the rear bearings and front bearings. I only say tentative because I've swapped them with other used parts.

I'm fast running out of ideas for the source of this noise. I know that the noise is present when the car is in motion. Engine revs and gear shifts make no difference. Brakes only make a difference in that the car stops moving so there's less noise. It gets very bad when the car is under load (e.g. trunk full of bricks) but does not appear to be the bearings as I've swapped and/or cleaned and repacked all four wheels now.

I'm down to:
M41 gearbox (doesn't sound like it)

4.10 differential (possible, but it was cleaned, painted, a new seal was installed and it was refilled with JT7 before I put it on the car).

The wheels themselves (these are newer "winston" metric tires from Mario_E's old 1965.

This is driving me bonkers!!!

The axle end play should be set, as described well by others. But that is not the source of the noise. Sounds to me like you have a bad side bearing on the differential or more likely, a bad pinion bearing. Not good.

I was leaning toward a Pinion Bearing in my post. I thought he was asking questions about his new Axle Bearings. Maybe I misread it, perhaps the shimming that is being discussed is for the Carrier Bearings.
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'75 Jeep CJ5 345Hp ChevyPwrd, two motorcycles, '85 Pickup: The '89 Volvo is the newest vehicle I own. it wasn't Volvos safety , it was Longevity that sold me http://home.no.net/ebrox/Tony's%20cars.htm

maybe I should plan on putting the original axle back on the car and tracing whatever "clickety" noise it has been making. At the least I'd be removing a whole set of variables.

I pulled the "replacement" axle I've had on for the last year. This took a while. To avoid late-night brake bleeding, I released the brake lines and kept the same drums and backplates

I then pulled the car's original axle out of storage, I pulled the half-shafts and found some really nasty old tan-brown grease. After I cleaned all that up, I cleaned and checked the bearing cones and races. I repacked them with "drum brake" grease and put the whole axle back together. All the wheel bearing shims are on the same side now.

Installation was not too bad 3-4 hours start to finish - I've pulled and/or installed axles on four different cars now so I'm getting the hang of it.

The bad news is that the rumble/groan noise is still there. I can't dismiss bad diff bearings entirely, but it seems unlikely that this axle has precisely the same problem.

I'm running out of moving parts to check.
I'm down to:

Wheels (I'll swap them tomorrow)
Clutch Throwout Bearing (never even considered it before)
Something in the gearbox
Something in the engine

And of course, any one of the new or used-but-good parts I've swapped on that might have been bad.

This includes all the wheel and differential bearings, and the second and third U-joints.

I'm getting very discouraged...

Thanks for all the advice so far.

I can imagine that's it's discouraging. That's a lot of work you've gone to.
The transmission output shaft bearing will make noise, increasing with road speed, not engine speed, but in fourth the noise will diminish quite noticeably, or go away entirely. Dipping the clutch pedal will also change the sound as the load varies.
If the new diff sounds the same, then the trans is the culprit. It's noises will be telegraphed up and down the driveshaft, and that may be what you have heard.

Rhys, thanks for the thoughtful reply.

Based on this, I should probably plan on putting the "other" axle back in. The original has issues of its own - unrelated to the road noise.

My gearbox is an M41J. I use this car mainly for work commuting and rarely ever use the overdrive anymore. It would seems prudent to go ahead and extract the M41J and slap an M40 back in there.

Of course, I *was* planning on using this car to commute 30 miles (mostly highway) to campus and back, but I've got a 1990 245 waiting to be bent to that purpose.

I've taken the day off work to try and solve this problem, so I'll do the swap and report back.

If indeed the culprit, I'll need to fix that M41J as soon as time allows.

The important thing is to know that the trans you are installing is good. I'd dismantle the one you have and inspect the bearings, but then I've rebuilt quite a few of them.
I've always preferred the M40's- the engines care less about rpm and noise than humans do.....

Well, I put the menu into a binder.

I don't know if I've expressed my situation, but I'm desperately trying to write my Master's Thesis, while working full-time and supporting my family. I finished my coursework in 2006, but have been working full time since then and it is hard to be a good father, husband, provider, and pursue my career while writing a thesis and trying to keep my transportation going. Something has got to give.

While I really enjoy driving and working on my Amazon, I just don't have the time to mess with it anymore. I garaged my 67 220E because it was eating all my free time and I bought this 68 130 because it wasn't supposed to need major parts replacement. I've got the spare parts in my stash and most of the tools and skills to replace just about anything that doesn't require welding, but damn it. I'm sick of doing this every evening. Every minute I spend trying to get this car to stop making one awful noise or another or to try and figure out why the mileage is awful is stealing a minute from somewhere.

I'm getting off the carousel for a while. My 130's getting parked and I'll be driving my 240 for the rest of the year (until it breaks). I got the "Purple Dragon's" plates today and while it needs some work itself, it is in a better starting place than the 130. At the very least I can leave it at a repair place and not expect them to be afraid to touch it.

By spring I should be ready to defend my thesis and finally, officially graduate. By then, my wife should be going back to work, and I can stop trying to half-ass all my repairs with used parts.

The gearbox and axle repairs are on the list. I'll get to it someday.
Thanks for all the help and advice. I'll be around.

Can't argue with any of that. You'll be driving a Volvo so you're still on the team.
I've been following the thread with interest and share your frustration at not finding the cause. Most areas seem to have been considered and maybe eliminated. Knowing that noises often, very often, seem to come from places other than the source, I was wondering if it might be a bad pilot bearing. Put it on the menu, maybe something to look at in the spring.

Do you mean the clutch throwout bearing, or the bearing on the driveshaft?

I've replaced the driveshaft bearing with new. Despite installing an M41, I've not gotten into the bellhousing on this car yet so the throwout could be bad. I was planning on putting a new one in when I changed the gearbox.

I'm not quitting volvos, just stepping away from the Amazon for a while before I decide to crush it out of frustration.

No, the one that goes in the end of the crank to take the GB input shaft. Guess I should have called it the spigot bearing. If they dry out and then go rusty, they can get very noisy as they gradually break up. The crank and shaft are rotating together when driving so you normally only get the noise when engaging or slipping the clutch, but if the input shaft can move around, the clutch can engage a little bit out of line which can put a "difficult" load on the GB front bearing. The noise I got reversing up a slope when mine broke up was painful to hear. I was slipping the clutch then. Just an idea, good luck with it when you get back on it.

Life is a series of priorities, and you've sequenced them as you need to, and that's good. We'll all be here when you return.
Until then, write me from the website if you have any questions on the vintage car stuff.
Rhys

Repairman Jack,

Can you seat the bearing races too far in when reinstalling the half-shafts?

The bearing cup sits in a machined pocket. The shoulder at the rear of the pocket backstops the cup.

There were shims on both sides.

According to the Green Book the shims are all on the left side. There is a table to determine the number of shims of what thickness according to end play measured with a dial indicator while you pop the right side axle back and forth. Measure, shim, tighten, repeat. Do you need a copy of the Green Book for the Spicer axle?

--
Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- I've taken to using mister because my name misleads folks on the WWW. I am a 53 year old fat man. ;-)

Thanks for the offer. I've got an electronic copy I can review. A dial indicator would be more useful... Hard to determine how much play is too much.

I was able to investigate this before it got dark.

I pulled both wheels, drums, and backplates. After removing all the shims and such, I found that there was ZERO play in the shafts. So little, it took some effort to turn each axle shaft.

I loosened one side up but found that the other was still too tight. Upon loosening the other side, I had lots of free play (at least 1/16" of an inch of outward movement - so I gradually tightened up that bearing race until there was minimal play, but still turned freely and did not bind.

After shimming and torquing the plates back on, I found that movement was still free but there was no end play on the shafts (maybe part of the problem?)

The optimal setting required shims on both sides. I tried each side alternately and could not get either side "flush" without loosing free movement on that axle. (a problem of its own?)


So long and short I got the axles loosened up but on my test-drive I'm still getting the low rumble-scrape. It is certainly less noisy than when I had the races tighter than a drum.

While I'm not doing this the most scientific and accurate way possible. I'm having a hard time seeing how I could get this so wrong I could be replacing the original noise with a new noise.

Maybe these bearing really are bad (I'm still doubting it). The heavy-load hauling really pointed towards the rear as the source of this problem...

The rear axle bearings need to be adjusted. This is done by adding or removing shims that you will find under one or the other brake backing plates. The inner ends of the axles butt against a small spacer in the differential, which allows the freeplay on both axles to be adjusted from one side. If everything involved is in good condition, and simply in need of adjustment, the side without any shims is simply reinstalled with the backing plate bolted back onto the axle tube. The way I used to adjust them back in the dark ages was to reinstall the backing plate on the other side with the shims found there originally, and then pushing and pulling on the axle along its axis. You should feel a very slight bit of play. If there is no play, add shims, if there is too much play, remove shims. Its a bit of a trial and error proposition. The play you want is just enough to be perceptible. I'm sure there is a more scientific way to measure, but that method always worked fine for me.

I'd be willing to bet you have a lot of play, which will cause noise.

There were shims on both sides. A thick, solid one on the driver's side and three thin ones on the passenger side. I put them back as I found them. Which says very little, but may be the key problem. I vague recall some old posts where people asked which sides the shims should be on. I seem to think both sides was bad. I've got spares in my stash if I need more. Perhaps I should get the shims off the other side and put them on a single wheel...?

This is one of the short-list of amazon components I'm still a complete novice. I've generally avoided the issue altogether and I've not investigated this as a cause of the problem at all.

Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can puzzle it out.

I believe I posted this before, check all your bushings. the rear dif makes noise the bushing keep the noise out of the cabin. The noise will be intermittent with a worn bushing as sometimes there is metal on metal contact and sometimes not.
--
Patrick, '68 220, '92 Eurovan (work truck) '53 PD4104 (conversion).

I keep forgetting to mention it, All my front bushings are new including the Lower-A arms, most are IPD blue poly. The rear are the rubber butterfly style. I've inspected these closely on several occassions.

One of the smaller bushings has suffered a tube/rubber separation, but it is still quite tight. My 67 wagon had a completely failed trailing arm bushing which made a noticeable clunk. This noise is nothing like that.

Thanks for reminding me to address that.

Any thoughts on the bearing races being too tight??

Pinion Bearings?
With the Driveshaft off the car can you move the Rear axle Flange up and down, side to side or in and out?

As far as your question, I am not familiar with Volvo rear axle Repair but any axle I have worked on, The bearing Races cannot be set too far in the Axle housing, in fact you have to Seat them all the way down to the shelf in the housing.
The Volvo Axle may be totally different so don't hold me to this.
--
'75 Jeep CJ5 345Hp ChevyPwrd, two motorcycles, '85 Pickup: The '89 Volvo is the newest vehicle I own. it wasn't Volvos safety , it was Longevity that sold me http://home.no.net/ebrox/Tony's%20cars.htm

When I was removing my driveshaft for u-joint replacement last week and installing my temporary shaft a couple days ago, I did not notice that the pinion was loose, but I did not check it specifically.

Man, this is driving me nuts.