scraping noise on acceleration

[BusBerd]

I've had a scraping noise coming from my rear Driver's side wheel whenever I was accelerating under load. The noise matched the rhythm of the wheel rotation. I thought it might be an axel problem so I replaced both axels in back. The noise was still there.
Then I thought it might be a wheel bearing issue so I cozied up to searching the samba forum for a few hours to educate myself on wheel bearings. Thru my research, I found different ways to test the wheel bearing. I wiggled my tire (after jacking it up) and there was considerable amount of play both vertical and horizontal. I checked the castle nut and it was way loose: I could even turn it a bit with my hand!
So I took the cotter pin out and cranked down on the castle nut, with a cheater bar and all ( my torque wrench does not go up to 243 ft. lbs.). I was able to tighten the castle nut quite a bit. Checking the play in the tire again there was zero horizontal wiggle (with hands at 3 & 9 on the clock) but there was still a little vertical wiggle (with hands at 12 & 6 on the clock).
My question is: have I done damage driving around with the castle nut so loose? Did I damage my wheel bearings? Trying to grasp what could be the scope of the problem and the seriousness of it.
I haven't driven it yet since tightening the castle nut, but I am assuming that was the reason for the scraping noise. I'll test drive it in the morning. I am planning a road trip in the bus with my 7 year old son to Yellowstone National Park in a few weeks, so I want to solve this issue, obviously.
Thanks for any help!
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"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
1977 Westfalia Camper Bus 2.0L Fuel Injected Engine, Manual Transmission

[Heathintexas]

My bet:

The loose wheel allowed the brake drum to lean over and make contact with the dust shield. Hopefully tighening up the nut solved that.

Here's a good tutorial for the rear bearing test if you're feeling uneasy

http://www.itinerant-air-cooled.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=11737
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http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=582117

[richparker]

I would pull the drums off and have a look. Could be the drum scraping on the back plate or maybe a spring broke and is scraping on the drum. Good luck, have a blast at Yellowstone.

This is a good tool to remove and tighten the rear axle nut. You use a breaker bar and hit the flat spot of the tool with a hammer.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=171109676404&globalID=EBAY-US
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[Heathintexas]

This is a good tool to remove and tighten the rear axle nut. You use a breaker bar and hit the flat spot of the tool with a hammer.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=171109676404&globalID=EBAY-US

Yea, except for buy the larger one meant for the bus. I personally didn't have any luck with this. I wound up using a 3/4" x 4ft breaker bar with an actual impact socket to get mine off. Man those things sure can fuse to the axel!

If your torque wrench doesn't go that high, you can use the trick I used. You'll need to know how much you weigh in lbs and devide 243 by that. take that number and that will tell you where to stand on your wrench. For instance, If you weigh 162 lbs, you would place your foot 1.5 ft away from the center of the axel and carefully apply your weight and nothing more (no bouncing)
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http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=582117

[BusBerd]

Thanks for the replies!

Well, I did a test drive this morning and there was no scraping sounds! It sounded great! Quiet!

I may try Colin's test just to be sure I didn't damage the bearings by not addressing this noise earlier.

Thank you all!!!
_________________
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
1977 Westfalia Camper Bus 2.0L Fuel Injected Engine, Manual Transmission