Although we generally don’t do mobile repairs anymore, we were recently called out to attend to a 2016 Ford Transit van that had suffered a catastrophic rear wheel bearing failure while traveling at 80km/h. Now, you’ll agree that rear wheel bearing failures are rare on these vehicles, but in this case, the failure was caused by sloppy workmanship when the bearing was installed by the vehicles’ owner to save some money.
The extent of the sloppiness became apparent when we removed the side shaft. The castellated hub nut appeared to have been tightened by the edge of a chisel or similar implement that was driven by a hammer, but the real problem was that the nut was so damaged that we could not remove it with a tool of our manufacture.
There is much else to relate about this episode but suffice to say that through luck and/or circumstance, we have not replaced Ford Transit rear wheel bearings for at least 10 years. Therefore, we did not have the tool the local Ford dealership told us we needed to a) get the nut off, and b), to retighten the nut to its proper torque value after reassembling the axle with new parts. We are certain that many independent workshops the world over have been in similar situations, but since the local Ford dealership would not let us borrow their tool, there was nothing for it but to launch an online search to find a tool for this application.
Seeing that we wanted to do the job right, we skipped over the generic versions of this tool, and eventually found an OEM-equivalent-
Ford Transit hub nut socket
Image source:
https://www.asttools.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/product/AST5189v2clipped1-800×800.jpg
Made by AST Tools, this tool is the exact equivalent of Ford tool #205-1007 that is intended for use on the rear wheel bearing hub nuts of Ford Transit vehicles from the 2014-model year to date. The image below shows this tool in use-
Image source:
https://www.asttools.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/product/AST5189action3-800×800.jpg
In practice, the boss on the tool passes through the bearing, thus aligning both the nut and the bearing with the axle, which ensures that the nut enters the threads on the axle squarely. This prevents cross-threading, which as we know, can be the very devil to repair- if it is repairable at all. Passing through the bearing also helps to prevent the tool from slipping off the nut during tightening, which as we also know, is a common feature of many generic castellated sockets.
So, if you did not have this tool ready at hand, how would you remove and tighten the hub nut on Ford Transit vehicles? Would you refer the vehicle to a dealer, or would you try making a tool by modifying one or more standard tools? Tell us about it in the comments section below. If however, you feel that you can keep these types of jobs in-house by investing in this tool, you can contact the manufacturer here for details on sellers or distributors near you.
- Please note, this is not a paid advertisement and we do not receive any commission from sales of this product.
