a major PITA job

[dw1]

Truly a "nut buster" both literally & figuratively. But I did it.

I am truly getting too old for this, but at the end there was quite a sense of accomplishment.

Background: I drove the wife's car (an 8 year old Chevrolet sedan) on the highway for the first time in awhile and heard an obvious speed-related noise. Further diagnosis led to the hypothesis that it was rear wheel bearings. Knowing what that job entails, my major thought was "Oh s**t".

Well, I finally got the old ones off, as you can see below. A combination of penetrating oil, slide hammer, club hammer, freshly sharpened chisels, and jacking screws finally did the trick.

Here is an interesting video of this job and various techniques, all of which fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKcgXmX8oBo
(I personally find this video unrealistic because there is no swearing.)

One important point: For the "jacking screw" method, use grade 8 or better bolts, not the inexpensive ones from Home Cheapo like I did (ref. the stripped bolt in the photo).

[porsche tech]

Those can be a bear on any vehicle! Nice job!

[fastfredracing]

Here is what I use, its called the hub shocker
. I laugh about the name every time I use it. It bolts to the hub, then you pound on it with your biggest sledge .
A true time saver , a lot of them will pop right out with a few whacks, but some of them man......
Rear hubs on Subaru are brutal. Takes me about 15 minutes to unbolt everything, then I hammer on it till my hands go numb, soak it down , come back hammer on it some more, . Rinse, and repeat .
I love talking car repairs

[unclebilly]

I’m trying to fix the HVAC linkage in my 2011 tundra. I have a broken door lever. It’s a total ***** job.

[McLovin]

Good job.
In 40 years of DIY wrenching, which after that time includes every conceivable maintenance and repair at least once, there was only one time that I threw in the towel and towed the car to a shop to finish.
Yep, you guessed it.
(It still bugs me to this day! I didn’t have the tools to get that hub off, and this was pre-Internet and Amazon so the right specialty tools weren’t cheap)..

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Rear hubs on Subaru are brutal.

So they are hub bearings on the Subies you are talking about and you are using The Shocker?

I did rears on an 02 Legacy. They were hub bearings. Not pressed bearings

Removal sucked.

[dw1]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Here is what I use, its called the hub shocker
. I laugh about the name every time I use it. It bolts to the hub, then you pound on it with your biggest sledge .
A true time saver , a lot of them will pop right out with a few whacks, but some of them man......
Rear hubs on Subaru are brutal. Takes me about 15 minutes to unbolt everything, then I hammer on it till my hands go numb, soak it down , come back hammer on it some more, . Rinse, and repeat .
I love talking car repairs

Seriously good idea....but....

I started to do a "poor man's" version of this with a 24 inch monkey wrench and my sledge hammer, but then I saw the likely resultant deformation of the car's trailing arms - which are stamped sheet metal (!) - and had to stop.

Yeah, talking car repairs is interesting. I learned a tremendous amount by finding out what worked (and more importantly, what didn't) from others.

I'm working on this kind of thing a bit slower having just turned 64, but that just means I use longer pipe cheaters and heaver hammers. And take pain killers before & after.

[mattdavis11]

The hardest job I have ever done on a car was a drive axle on my 2000 Toyota Camry V6. It was the passenger side. On my car, it is slip into trans with a carrier bearing farther outboard. Yeah... Those suckers can be frozen in at the carrier. Mine was. Slide hammer didn't budge it.

I thought I had it when I cut the drive axel between the trans and carrier twice, and could bang it out. Nope. Not enough space to whack it hard enough. Finally I removed the carrier mount from the engine (A PITA TOO).

I then tried to pound on it again, but at the time my vise was not yet mounted. Finally, I dropped what was left of the axel and the carrier to the concrete from over my head several times. It popped out after that.

[Rusty Heap]

Be Sure to grease your trailer wheel bearings at least once a year!

[fastfredracing]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

So they are hub bearings on the Subies you are talking about and you are using The Shocker?

I did rears on an 02 Legacy. They were hub bearings. Not pressed bearings

Removal sucked.

Yes Bob, they are complete hub assemblies, just like the front, bolt in . 4 bolts hold them in, but they must have a super precision fit, plus, they are seated pretty far back into the knuckle, I struggle with these far more than with any 3/4 ton, one ton truck,
If anybody wants the low down on the heavy truck stuff, let me know, I dont even use a hammer, or any kind of puller, Once they are unbolted, I pop them out with ease in 3 minutes or less .

[SCadaddle]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Yes Bob, they are complete hub assemblies, just like the front, bolt in . 4 bolts hold them in, but they must have a super precision fit, plus, they are seated pretty far back into the knuckle, I struggle with these far more than with any 3/4 ton, one ton truck,
If anybody wants the low down on the heavy truck stuff, let me know, I dont even use a hammer, or any kind of puller, Once they are unbolted, I pop them out with ease in 3 minutes or less .

Must be the road salt and corrosion giving you a hard time with the Subaru that has a wheel bearing in a hub assembly. The rears on my 05 Legacy were no issue whatsoever. Simply removed and replaced by hand. No hammers no needed force at all on a car that has spent it's life living in Mississippi with 125k on the clock. MUCH easier design than the earlier 95-99 Legacys that you have to remove the entire hub and press the old bearing out and press the new one in.

My once upon a time friend took an 05 Legacy GT that spent it's first 15 years running around Detroit in on trade. Once on the lift it went to the salvage auction. It was absolutely rotten underneath. I was astonished.

[SCadaddle]

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap

Be Sure to grease your trailer wheel bearings at least once a year!

I made a trip one day in the summertime years ago from central Mississippi to New Orleans, with a couple friends that own an automotive repair shop in a small town where they are also volunteer Firemen.

We kept seeing small grass fires on the side of the interstate every few miles. My Firemen friends made the comment "pretty soon we'll find the guy pulling the trailer up ahead on the side of the road with a bad wheel bearing that got the balls in the bearing so hot that when they escaped the bearing they caught the grass on fire". Sure enough, we ran across the guy with the broken down trailer.