How Easy Wheel Bearings Can Be

"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro) 03/04/2019 at 12:30 • Filed to: wrenching, wheel bearings

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So it turned out that my sister’s car needed some wheel bearings. She was pleased to learn that this wasn’t nearly as big of a hassle as she experienced on her old !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Quick recap: changing the rear wheel bearings on her 2004 Explorer involved disconnecting/removing several items: the brake caliper, brake rotor, toe link, parking brake actuator, upper and lower ball-joints, and axle. Once the knuckle was removed, there was a snap-ring to remove, and of course it took a press to drive the bearing out. FordTechMakuloco has a good video on this if you want to see more about the process:

So when we found worn front wheel bearings on her !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , she couldn’t help but expect the worst. Boy, was she in for a treat!

It bothered me that we never really got a good look under the car to perform a complete inspection prior to purchase. All I was able to see was that it was less rusty under there than on mine. But these SN95s are pretty easy cars to work on (for the most part), so I knew that if something did come up, it would be manageable.

And sure enough , a fter driving it for a couple of weeks, she began to notice a shudder under moderately hard braking. Fully understanding that she had bought it as-is, and had no warranty to lean on, she brought the car to me, where I finally had a chance to get a better look at things. The brakes themselves seemed fine, except that I was getting inconsistent readings when I tried to check the front rotors for runout. Lo and behold, there was play in the wheel bearing, which was allowing the rotor to wobble around inside the brake caliper.

So she got some new bearings to do both sides, and was surprised to see that they were actually whole hub assemblies. After removing the brake caliper and bracket, all that was left was to pop off the dust cap and undo the spindle nut. Slide the old bearing/hub assembly off, slide the new one on and reassemble.

And the cost wasn’t all that bad, either. Less than $100 in parts to do both sides, and no need to use a press! (And yes, the new bearings took care of the shudder.)

Old bearings

BeaterGT > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 12:44

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Nice! Put Timkens on my Legacy GT, so much better than OEM.

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 12:58

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When I did the front bearings on my Rabbit I had the option to buy the bearings and press them in or spend a bit more and buy the whole knuckles assembly with a new bearing pressed in already.

I’m so glad I took the easy way out. I think all together it was 12 bolts on obviously 4 lug nuts, 2 on the strut, 3 LCA, 2 brake calipers, and the axle nut . Much easier 

Urambo Tauro > BeaterGT 03/04/2019 at 12:59

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Timken and National are the ones I hear good things about when it comes to bearings . And they’ve held up pretty good for me in t he past. The old bearings here were Koyo brand, which I think I heard somewhere was Ford’s OEM. 140,000 miles ain’t bad, I guess.

BeaterGT > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 13:03

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Not bad at all assuming they haven’t been replaced . I’d be lucky to get 40k out of the OEM Subaru ones. Not saying my driving made it any easier on them...

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 13:04

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My ass puckered a bit when he was taking out the snap ring.

Boxer_4 > BeaterGT 03/04/2019 at 13:35

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Meanwhile, I had a Timken hub assembly go south after 30,000 miles. I’m putting an OEM NTN assembly back in. The original NTN was at least  good for 75,000 (and saw an impact while parked that threw the alignment out). 

3point8isgreat > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 14:52

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This makes me almost want to replace the wheel bearings on mine just to marvel at how easy it is.

BeaterGT > Boxer_4 03/04/2019 at 15:03

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Haha, no way! This is on a Subaru? 

Boxer_4 > BeaterGT 03/04/2019 at 15:19

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This is on an ‘09 Forester.  Maybe it’s an anomaly!?

BeaterGT > Boxer_4 03/04/2019 at 15:56

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Perhaps. I know Subaru did make a lot of design improvements over my model year too. 

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 16:12

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My car also uses a hub assembly that you just replace as a unit, but the end of the strut hangs down in front of a bolt you need to undo it. You have to unclamp the bracket that hugs the strut (Green arrow) and slide it up. If you forget to mark where on the cylinder it originally sat you’ll fuck up your alignment.

Fortunately the hub is a GM part so it's like $60. 

shop-teacher > Urambo Tauro 03/04/2019 at 16:48

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Nice an easy!

Boxer_4 > BeaterGT 03/04/2019 at 18:47

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Looking at Subaru’s online parts catalog, it appears that the part numbers of the various hub assemblies have been superseded at least once, in some cases twice.  Different car models use different hub assemblies, but they all appear to have been superseded at some point.