Alfasud front hub socket

[colcol]

Hello all Alfasud and Alfasud Sprint owners out there.
On the Sud based cars, on the front wheel bearings, it is a major problem to remove the bearings as you need a special sided socket for the nut, its not a conventional 6 sided nut, and Alfa Romeo back in the day wouldn't sell the socket to the general public, only to dealers.
The alternative was to get it made by a tool or die maker, which was expensive.
Looking at 'Totally Alfa' a place in the UK that makes special tools for servicing Alfa Romeo's they now are able to supply the special socket required to remove the nut, it is a 3/4 inch sqaure drive.
The nut is torqued to approximate two hundred pounds, so you need a high rating torque wrench to get the torque required.
You still need special plates and tools to press the bearing on and off the hub, in my experience, the bearings are usually loose anyway, as the bearings 'rock and roll' and wear out the hub and therefore the bearings are loose, and you need the nut to undo to remove the bearings.
With computer aided machining it is now quicker to make up these special tools.
Check out 'Totally Alfa' for their range of special tools.
The Alfa 33 has a different front hub design thats better than the Sud, but still is a pain to replace a front wheel bearing.
On the Sud, you need an external socket, the 33 needs an internal socket, sort of like a giant allen key about 50 mm big.
Didn't see a special tool on the 'Totally Alfa' website for the 33 front wheel bearings, may need some enquiries to push the developement along!, Colin.

[SudSub]

Interesting! Thanks for posting Colin.

[amichie]

I bought the totally Alfa tool and it works fine. Bearings are then an easy job to press in and out with a small press.

[colcol]

The nut used to come loose all the time, despite being done up to 200 lbs, the nut stops turning at about 100 lbs, burring over nut, loctite and constant swearing and that nut would still loosen off, due to lack of press fit on hub to bearing, need about ,05mm or .002 inch old school.
The early model Sud had a metal plate that would hold the bearing, worked good, later model had plastic plate, not so good, hit a kerb or pot hole and the plastic clamp would distort and the bearing would rock and roll in the housing, Colin.

[amichie]

You have to stake the nut.

[colcol]

You have to stake the nut, sure do, but if the bearing is not a tight fit on the hub, then, it somehow 'rocks and rolls' the nut loose, go figure, Colin.