355 Rear axle bearing

I have not been in there in a while but if you are talking about this... If you can feel it with your hand it will be bigger under load. A new bearing will be harder to turn in your hand and an old one will turn free but there should be no wiggle in any direction.

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I have not been in there in a long time and just can't remember. It would depend on the design of bearing and shaft. It is possible the design is a sandwich design so running the axle nut into the 100ft. lb. range locks everything down. I would then put a prybar on it and see if you can get the 1mm of play. If you can't I would leave it. If you can still get 1mm of play I'd get a new rear wheel bearing. I would do this leaving the inner disconnected to make sure everything spun free and you were not being fooled by the stichion of stacked parts.

 

You could also unscrew the other side and see if you get the same 1mm axial play.

 

It is quite possible that the small axial movement that you observed will disappear when the drive shafts are in and tightened, especially since you have similar play on both sides. The drawing below shows how the two parts, blue and yellow, are clamped together by the driveshaft nut. The yellow part acts as an inner bearing race and, together with the blue tubular part of the hub, as a spacer which determines the preload on the two rows of balls (I believe they are preloaded). If you are going to do a check, you would have to fully torque the nut (some 275 Nm, I think). Alternatively, you could torque the nut to, say, 100 Nm and see whether it causes the play to be considerably smaller. This would indicate that the play will, most likely, be completely eliminated when the nut is fully torqued.

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