Hi again Bruce,

I've moved on from weird brake problems to more conventional stuff, although I'm beginning to doubt if the term conventional can be made to apply to anything related to Volvos. Those Swedes do some strange engineering, and I'm a Swede.

Thanks for the info, but it sounds like just the nasty sort of feedback I was fearing. Hmm. Well. Maybe I can put the whole thing together without the lock ring just to get it out of the garage for the weekend. Then order up the lock ring and pull the axle again and press the damned ring on. Grease should still be good if I don't drive it. It looks like a shot inner seal may have been the predecessor to the bearing croaking in this instance. Washed all the grease out but didn't provide enough gear lube to compensate.

I was a little concerned about tempering the original "spacer" (yah, that's what they call it. Sounds innocuous) by heating it up anyhow. No sweat to hack it off. My line of work revolves around aircraft turbine engine alloys, so I've got some pretty mean spirited little abrasive disks that laugh at anything shy of stellite, as long as you keep the RPM up.

Well, thanks again. Hmm...