Corvette Enthusiast Turns Entrepreneur

By The Spindle People

For a Corvette owner, the pleasure of driving one of these classic sports cars pales slightly when the odometer turns over 30,000 miles. That’s when it’s time to check and regrease the rear wheel bearings – a costly and time consuming project.

Thanks to an enterprising Corvette owner from way back, this complicated process has become a whole lot simpler.

Jerry Narbut operates The Spindle People in Canfield, Ohio. Talk to him, and he’ll tell you necessity is the mother of invention. It’s what inspired him to invent an exchange spindle assembly that completely eliminates the need for an expensive tear down and re-pack. His assembly is a complete unit equipped with two grease fittings and a bolt-on installation that makes renewal of Corvette rear wheel bearings a snap.

Jerry first became aware of the problems built into maintaining and repairing Corvette rear wheel bearings when he bought his first Corvette in 1969. It wasn’t unit 1978 that he decided to do something about it. He was up to his elbows in grease, working on the rear wheel bearings of a Vette he bought to rebuild, when he reasoned there had to be an easier way. Encouraged by friends and years of tool and die experience under his belt as a supervisor at General Motors, he began to develop ideas for an assembly and tooling fixtures
to build it. He wanted to find a way to “simplify the process”.

In 1980 he sold his first standard assembly. During the next year he worked out the kinks for the grease fittings. There is a U.S. and Canadian patent on the special grease fittings Jerry invented. The fittings are a feature exclusive to The Spindle People. The standard unit now includes the grease fittings, pre-set bearings and races, inner and outer seals, mounting bolts, stainless steel parking brake hardware, spindle nut and cotter pin, new parking brake plate, dust shield and new forged spindle made in the USA. They are shipped pre-packed with a high grade of grease. “We try to make it easy, to give the customer everything he needs to complete the job”. We also make complete unit with every type of new trailing arms, Jerry points out.

After the simple 4-bolt installation and a small alteration of the trail arm for the inboard grease fitting the ongoing process of the maintaining your wheel bearings become simple. Every 30,000 miles or so, you take an ordinary grease gun and pump grease into the
bearing races.

The cost for the standard assembly is $325 per side plus a refundable core deposit charge of $200 According to Jerry, this is a substantially lower cost than what a dealer or mechanic would charge to do the job--providing you can find one willing “Seventy-five percent of the dealers won’t even take on this type of work he adds”.

Jerry builds his assemblies from recycled cores in stock or sent back from customers, only the brake flange and bearing supports are recycled all the other parts are brand new including the spindles. He believes in providing “Only the best for the Corvette”.

In addition to the rear bearing assemblies, The Spindle People carries an inventory of over 20,000 Corvette parts, every thing from suspension items, discontinued NOS GM emblems, interior parts and more Jerry would be glad to answer inquiries about his products. For information
you can call / fax to 330.793.3579 or Email spindlepeople@yahoo.com