Learn me: Mixing and matching wheel bearings

This is new territory for me. For anyone who's unfamiliar, my Courier is 6 lug stock. Toyota trucks of similar-enough era are 5 lug. Allegedly, the hubs swap over with the right wheel bearings. This wouldn't be that interesting to me except that I would like to run an explorer rear end at some point (5 lug) and want to have matching wheels (shocker I know). So, the information below is from another guy who began attempting this. I have the hubs but don't currently have measuring calipers and wouldn't know exactly what to measure, so he and I have been a little back and forth on this. The one person who has said it should work has been unresponsive to our requests for part numbers so far. Anybody have suggestions on how to search this stuff, or where to find catalogs that would have the information?

Other Guy said: The inner bearing cup needs an O.D. of 65mm, with a cone I.D. of 30mm. The outer bearing cup needs an O.D. of 50mm, with a cone I.D. of 20mm. I've run these numbers both metric and converted to inches, and I have not found a standard combo with these sizes. You can find the cup or cone separate with the right dimensions, but the angles don't jive between the cup and the cone. The grease seal is also a consideration, but I haven't got that far. I've found a close outer bearing, with 52mm O.D., but every inner bearing would require machining a spacer of some sort. Not impossible, but I might as well just redrill the original hubs, and turn the center down if I need to borrow machine time.... The stock outer will not work, I tried. The race (cup) O.D. is too small, it's too loose to even try to stake in the Toyota hub. The mix and match is going to be the only way, but that's over my head. I tried a few with no luck. [It had been said the stock outer bearing would work fine]

In reply to classicJackets:

First step I would take is purchasing a set of digital calipers from Harbor Freight for $17.99

Then what you are really concerned about is the Spindle outside diameter, inside diameter of the hub, and the width of the bearing race pockets. Once you have this information confirmed 100%, then you can open up a bearing catalog and select the conical bearings to suit your sizes.

Most bearings have numbers stamped on them. Match the numbers.

Front and rear T-90 transmission bearing interchanged with the wheel bearings on a small German car.

BTW: all bearings are metric.

Bearings come in different sizes. A1, A2, A4, etc. Those bearings will have a specified inside and outside diameter. So will the hole in the hub, and the outer diameter of the spindle. You need to match up at least one of those diameters if you don't find an exact match. The hub may call for an A4 and the spindle may call for an A2. Install the A4 in the hub and have a spacer machined to fill in the space between the A2 spindle and the A4 bearing. You need the exact measurements of what you are trying to mate together, then you need to take that info to a bearing chart. Get a set of calipers.

Instead of trying to measure, why not look up the bearing Part number for your vehicle and the hub donor?

Once you have that you can should be able to use the numbers to look up the specs. Once you have the specs for the original part numbers then you can start cross referencing to get the ID, OD, and width you need.

Much easier that trying to measure something and finding that your measurement falls between two part numbers and guessing is it part number A or part number B?

i got bored once and found a set of bearings and races that would allow me to put the front brakes from an 80's half ton 2 wheel drive Chevy pickup onto a Chevette if i wanted to... i think it involved mixing and matching the contents of 4 different bearing part numbers to get the inner and outer bearings and races, but it worked on paper..

last fall, after deciding that the 4 lugs on my Saturn wouldn't cut it, i did the same thing and found a hub/bearing combination that allowed me to put 5X100 wheels on the car, but i lost the piece of paper where i wrote it all down and decided that it's just a Saturn so why bother?