When hubs are properly installed on the spindle, how tight should they be...how freely should the hub spin on the spindle?

I noticed it took more torque than I thought to get my spindle nuts on far enough to put the cotter pin through the holes. They're fairly tight. The hubs spin by hand with moderate resistance. they're not hard to spin (with the wheel off, just turning the hub by hand), but you can't just give em a whirl either, they won't just spin freely.

I'm wondering if they're too tight... If so it probably means my spindle is too big for the hubs I'm using (doing a disc brake swap with 3d gen camaro hubs and 2nd gen camaro spindles). I don't want to go driving down the road and have my bearings burn up in a mile.

Too tight. While spinning wheel (slowly) tighten to 15 lb. ft. Then back of nut one flat (1/6 turn) and insert cotter. If doesn't lineup, loosen not more than 1/2 more flat. So says factory manual for '65. Just for information, I just pulled the left front the other day on my '72 Plymouth to check brake linings, the factory manual for that say 0.003 in end play. As usual MOPAR engineering had abetter solution with a stamped metal retainer oer the nut to allow much finer adjustment of the end play and retaining the nut wity a cotter. Also I had front end work done at Sears once and felt the wheels after 20 miles on the freeway and the left front was hotter than a pistol. They can overheat if incorrectly adjusted. Good luck.

My $0.02

I definitely have more than 15 ft/lbs on it...probably more like 50 :(

I'm sure everyone has their own method, but here is what I do:

Tighten the nut fairly snug (wheel will have definite resistance) and rotate the wheel one way only for a turn or so. This seats all the bearings and gets everything alligned. Back the nut off and tighten it finger tight plus what ever fraction of a turn is needed to align the hole for the cotter pin.

should the hub and bearings freely slide on past the cotter pin hole. My problem was I had to use the nut to 'push' the hub far enough onto the spindle to be able to insert the cotter pin hole. this didn't seem quite right to me...

Did you install new bearing races? If so, did you get them fully seated? Sounds to me like you have something in the way of letting you fully seat the bearings. I don't know if there is a size difference for parts between 2nd and 3rd gen spindles but that could be a factor as well. Everything should seat fully and tighten up snug at finger tight. Also, are you sure you got and used the correct inner seal? If it was the wrong size (too small) it wouldn't let the hub fully seat to the spindle.

yes, I got new races...maybe I didn't get them in far enough? I'm going to dissassemble it and check everything out again tonight. sucks though, since I packed it full of grease, it will be a messy undertaking.