When to check wheel bearings after a change?

[majcd213]

Hi All- some 600 miles ago I fitted new front wheel bearings. This went fine and the adjustment although cumbersome also went OK. Basically you tighten whilst turning to centralise the bearings, then back off and then re-tighten by hand to a set pre-load. I did actually measure this with a dynamometer and since I had new oil seals I set it around 0.8Kg. All was fine until now. I did think that the resistance to running did seem very low and setting cars in general I would usually go a little tighter- checked mine when it "felt right" and it was 1.5kg, but I fought that urge down and set it at 0.8 as instructed.

Anyway all has been fine since then although to be fair I haven't been driving very long distances or going above 40 for a while now... but I have just had my alloys refurbed, and this coincided with my spending some time on the A3. To my surprise I got obvious judder above 50 mph; I thought this was probably because the refurbishers had forgotten to balance the wheels again, so I intended to just get them re-balanced. However, whilst removing the wheels I found that I do have some obvious movement in the bearings and so had to readjust them. 600 miles seems a very small adjustment interval so maybe the wheels are out of balance and have caused this or maybe I simply got the bearings wrong in the first place?

Finally a note on the adjustment method- do you...
1. Tighten up the nut by hand to above the desired setting, then apply the force by extending the dynamometer and unscrew the nut until the wheel just starts to turn or...

2. Loosen the nut and then tighten it in stages testing the resistance until you get the right reading.

Personally I think I prefer (1) as I think it should hold the bearing centralised better, but maybe this leads to too high a preload? I'm hoping mine just needed a little nipping up and that I haven't done anything nasty by setting too high or too low a preload. In fact its no big deal as I will be removing the hubs to swap the discs anyway and I can press in new bearings then if necessary- but obviously I'd rather not!
Cheers
Mike

[amarshall]

My past experience of 50mph judder has always been balljoint related.

[majcd213]

Yep I wondered that. Cant find any movement in them tho.. uppers are new, I left the lowers. Having tightened up the bearing its MUCH better to drive.

[marky]

I put new bearings in an adjusted them at the time and since then they have needed no further adjustment - have done maybe 4-5K.

To adjust - tighten the nut slowly to 22 lb ft while spinning the hub. Then slacken off and re-tighten by hand (no tools).

Mark.