This

and


As i am sure Frank will add, his car was not very old and these bearings did not have enough grease in from the start!
Good job the damage was spotted before the wheel decided to leave the stub axle

At least his 7 is now in safe hands at the 7 Workshop and will soon be back on the road

Nasty. AS you say it was a good thing it was spotted before damage was done.

Oooh! Nasty...
Frank was a lucky chap!

I have heard other stories about Caterham not putting enough grease in the bearings on assembly

Frank, was the stub-axle ok, or did that get damaged too?

Stub axle needs replacing too looking at the blue colour and the welded on spacer yesterday
Very lucky indeed

Holy Moly...and he initially thought it was a puncture!

good job Uncle Albert is now doing the fettling and not those twa*s at CATRAM

As the hub assembilies come pre built from the supplier/manufacturer caterham do have a problem here.
I am not the first and i am sure not the last to be put in this dangerous position on the rd unless caterham take a look at the problem here.
They just dont come with any where near enough grease in them so caterham please strip them down and re pack if you must stay with this supplier.
I have heard alot come badly fitted with the edge of the seal folded back.
I would strongly suggest that the wheel bearings are checked yearly at the service intervals before someone is hurt or worse.
The damage on my car is quite substantial and expense to me through no fault of my own as the car was purchased from new at caterham with caterham carrying out all the serviceing.
We do pay alot for our cars but it would seem that profit now comes before quality which would now put me off buying a new 7 unless improvements are made.
I have always been very loyal to caterham in the past but now i am very disapointed with the situation i find myself in.

Please all, do or have someone check them.

Cheers,

Frank.

Maybe a letter to caterham would be in order.

I would have to agree with that - and further, I wonder if they shouldn't offer some sort of compensation as they were responsible for the sale and servicing...

At the end of the day it's just not good enough and the issue needs to be addressed before someone gets hurt.

After reading this, i took my front wheel bearings apart even though they were running smoothly.
The bearings seemed OK, but I found that who ever assembled them for Caterham had trapped the seal on the inner bearing in exactly the same way on both sides.
Consequently, there were pieces of rubber seal torn away and the seal which is an L shape was missing a small piece for about 40% of the diameter.

Initially I was going to replace the bearings. However, the rubber seals still completely fill the hole in the outer race, and I suspect the seal as it is now is no worse than the felt washer used on previous designs.
Also, there was no noticeable play in the bearings and they didn't require any adjustment, so wear must be minimal.

I have greased them and reassembled them and plan to take them apart every year to check/maintain them.
It is surprisingly straight forward to do