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My left rear was humming at about 140,000 miles. I got the Koyo part for about $260 from Autobus with the hint from one of the replies here. A local shop wanted $1200+ to do one side.
My gear puller separated the hub from the bearing rather than the whole unit from the axle carrier. So that raised the effort and degree of difficulty. I had to remove the whole axle carrier and beat the half hub out.
I also had to fashion a “press” to remove the hub assembly. Basically a large fully threaded bolt with nuts on both sides through one of the lug holes (after knocking it out), then holding the nut with a wrench and zapping it with the impact. Unfortunately, that removed the outer portion only and the inner portion was still stuck. Air hammer finally got it off. It came apart into 3 pieces.
Same thing happened to me and here are my thoughts. Hope is helps someone else.
1. This thread helped a ton so thanks to you guys.
2. This video helped.
- bearing removal starts around 2:50. He does have to remove some suspension because his bolts were messed up from a previous repair.
3. Notice in the video he does not use a hub removal tool. He just hammers the full assembly out slowly. I used a hub puller and that's probably why the bearing separated. When this happens your degree of difficulty goes up a ton. So I suggest first trying the hammer method using the leverage of the hub spindle while it's connected to the bearing. This along with other methods I'll list below is probably a better route vs. a hub puller - especially if you're in the rust belt, have high miles on the bearing and/or the assembly is stuck in the knuckle.
4. What I had to do once the bearing was separated: Tons of pb blaster over two days. Tons of air hammering to allow the oil to get in the cracks. Re-inserted the hub bolts half way into the assembly. Then hit everything with a torch, then attached a socket and extension and hit the extension with an air hammer from under the car. This next step might not be required but it sped things up for me (also because I was desperate). After I did all that stuff I finally saw a tiny bit of separation. The issue is I couldn't get much surface area on the front of the bearing assembly to hammer. So I removed the e-brake. This looks complicated but it turned out to be pretty simple. Just make sure you take a picture before you do it. All I needed was a needle nose and vice grips. Once you have the e-brake off I used a 3lb hammer and hammered a little from different angles and it finally started to move and eventually came out. I also wrapped my axle with a shop rag in case I missed.
I now see why my shop quoted me 4 hours plus for just one bearing and all the horror stories you hear about these things. If my assembly would not have been stuck I would have had this done in one afternoon but since the bearing separated it took way more time, effort and grit.
Key tools: high power impact, air hammer, 3lb hammer, 17mm shallow swivel socket with long extension, pry bar/long flat head screw driver, torque wrench (1/2" 20-250 ft lb), 32mm 12-point socket and other tools mentioned in this thread.
11-17-23, 05:59 AM
