my experience changing rear wheel bearing

turned into my neighborhood saturday morning and the wheel bearing crumbled. sounded like marbles crunching together, not a good sound.

anyways i ordered the seal (wrong one btw) from toyota, and bearing from autozone (a timken) and got to work sunday morning (in the rain).

Heres what it sounded like with the rear end jacked up and unlocked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOv16kKY2AM


Anyways i followed this guide. http://rlcanon.sw.utexas.edu/taco/rwb.html it all worked great, i did also soak it in pb blaster. ive never used the stuff but the entire process wasnt to hard so it went well. I did use the "slam on concrete method."

heres what mine looked like, note i have abs as the tutorial did not. the cuffs on either side of the abs speed sensor have to be cut off according to toyotas fsm, so thats what i did as the new bearing provides some.



The seal from the guide, is if you DO NOT have abs, as i do, mines sunken and harder to destroy. the cuff furthest from the hub sits against the seal and keeps everything mostly dry.



as the axle is semi floating, minimal fluid leaked out, and i mean like two or three drops.

to get the cuffs, and bearing on, i used a length of pipe that fit perfect to hammer em in. the pipe end i was hammering on actually had a piece of quarter inch welded to it as it was previously used as a frame for a car part. we needed a hand sledge to put the new cuffs on.

I did pinch the break lines with a vice grip (the rubber lines), and afterwards just had to reverse bleed the breaks and all was well.

all in all knowing what i know now, this could be a two hour job.

hand sledge, assortment of flat head screw drivers, set of metric sockets, metric wrenches, snap wring plyers, breaker bar to put hub back on tight, and for the breaks an eye dropper, lenght of iv hose, and break fluid. also a pipe, dremel, and an air wrench for wheel.


I would like to give a shout out to chris 4x4, the_glory_fades, and bfabrian for their over the phone, and on hands help.

 

other bearing went out tonight on wheeling trip. will do it wednesday when bearing gets in. grrr. will take more pics if any interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsmGlQHOao

 

Are the bearings dry? Do you ever grease them? I don't get why they are going out? What's going on? Lots of water crossings then high speed travel?

 

They are sealed unservicable units. Time, mileage, and driving kills them. I bought the truck at 172 miles and its at 185 now, ive been wheeling twice now, and the second time wheeling was last night.

 

Hey there. I just replaced the inner seal on the axle since it was leaking fluid on my 2000 tacoma. I didnt find the outer o ring so i didnt replace it. When i drained the axle fluid and pulled out the shaft I think the "watery" axle oil went into the bearings on one side and maybe washed off any of the good grease it had since now it started to vibrate when im going around 30mph. Its been a long proces and im still wondering how to take the bearings off the easiest way possible. Im thinking about welding some sort of rig since I have a welder but ill look into the website you posted. Now its still leaking axle fluid but from the side of the o ring since I didnt change it. geez what a proces...... unfortunately the link you posted no longer works :/ Thanks for the help.

 

Howdy! Since this post I've done them both many more times.

Firstly, the retainer ring needs to sit in the seal,you can coat the ring in grease and install axle, remove and see where seal rode on ring to assure proper placement as you can press ring on to deep or not deep enough.

Secondly the o-ring is for dust.

Can't help much on vibes, but I did have a bent axle shaft and bent wheel si had to do that bearing again.

 

Yours sounds like it went a lot smoother than when I did mine. There was no way in hell mine was coming off doing the beat it on the ground method (yes I cut the little ring off ). I ended up having to use a 20lb sledge on the end of the axle to get the bearing off, which in turn mushroomed out the splines which added a step of grinding and filling the splines back into shape. That was like 6 hours and just one side. The other side, my buddy happened to stop by just after I got started and told me his dad had a press, we buzzed over there and had it apart in like 10 minutes. I don't think I'll be attempting it again without a press.

 

Press certainly makes it easier. Unfortunatly many presses are to short so you got lucky.

Hope it went smoothly! I need to do a real write up or video one day, I got good.

 

I'll probably end up making my own press welding. A lot of the shops I call and tell them to press it for me give me that "I'll give you a call back with a price" they never call since I already have everything taken care of and they can't rip me off

 

well that sounds pretty shitty. Ive had good luck with minor modifications to the harbor freight press. A little afraid of the cast arbor plates so the swag offroad ones do much better.

overall its an hour and a halfish job if you have a hand bleeding the brakes.

 

Did you make modifications to the press? would you mind telling me which one did you buy for the work? I might have to buy one since there not super expensive. maybe photos? thanks

 

Just got the press and made a make shift ring remover first before I make the bearing remover. Just posted in case some one needs ideas and are going trough the same thing since I haven't seen this type on the web. You'll need to cut the first ring and head up the big ring to remove it since the welded metal is not that thick to take on both at the same time

 

I need one of those presses. How much to they run at HF?

 

That's beautiful.

Press is cheap, watch sales. Make sure you dont press on bearing to far!

 

Hi Trapper. The press is 200 regular. I got it for around 165 with a 20% off coupon. If your going to built a T like this one make sure you cut off the first ring first. The C jaws that pull out the gear ring thing are not strong enough to pull both off. They bend. Also heat up the gear ring slightly to help it move out. I'll post updates for the bearing remover I'll be building as I go a long in case anyone needs ideas.

 

The diameter of the ABS reluctor ring is 2 3/4" so using a tube with an ID of 2 7/8" or better will allow the shaft to be pressed out of the 2 retainers, ABS ring and the bearing in one operation. The snap ring must first be sacrificed by carefully bending and pulling it out from between the outer retainer and the ABS ring.
There is a bunch of subtle tricks to installing a new inner seal in the ABS equipped housings, way beyond just driving it in. Search this forum for "rear axle bearing", titles only, for all the tips and the Toyota TSB on the subject. Also if the rear is an e-locker and the truck does not have ABS the ring can be left off.

This fellow was made of scrap salvaged from a huge CNC mill shipping support and of course "color matched".

 

Hi dirty.yea that's the photo that i got the idea to make mine with. I just used parts I had available. The tube couldn't take everything off at once. The bottom piece was bending badly removing the bearing and one retainer. The bottom piece is 3/16 thick. Do you know how thick is the bottom piece of that one?

 

It's 1/2" and does not even flex.

 

Just got a HF coupon for the press, 159.99. Highly recommend it folks!