Front wheel bearings shot - try DIY or take it in?

Evening Tacoma World!

It's been a long year but finally my vacation arrives! However in going over the truck for a camping trip I discovered my wheel bearings are shot and they're pretty bad. So the truck is grounded 'till I get this fixed. It sucks that my vacation is cut short if it happens at all, but I'm seriously glad I found it before I got a few hundred miles away from home out in the woods somewhere.

Anyhoo, I've briefly looked over the procedure and while it looks do-able I'm not sure this is something I wanna tackle. Seems like I'll need a big press and don't have one. My neighbor probably has one, but even then is this something I'll wanna try & tackle in a day or am I better off just paying a shop? I'm mechanically inclined & do most of my own work, but this one almost doesn't seem worth it. '03 V6 x-cab 4x4 SR5 btw.

This is my fault. I listen to at least semi-loud music all the time. I'd noticed some symptoms for a while but since I hardly ever make it over 60 MPH (heavy traffic), I kept putting off a diagnosis. I'd been hearing (and feeling at certain speeds) a grinding sound over 5 mph if I had the sounds turned down or off and had a shimmy from 62 to 68 MPH. This morning I jacked up the front of the truck, spun the passenger side front tire and got some nasty noises out of it. Then gave it the wiggle test and had a surprising amount of play in the wheel. That made me immediately ground it.

So what say you TW - give it a go or leave it to the pros?

TIA!

 

Hey man,
I attempted doing mine and busted them with the press. That stuff is not a joke.
The amount of force it took to press in/out. I improperly supported the bearing when pressing them back in and ruined them.
I recommend taking out the spindles/hubs and just paying someone to press them in.
Do the install yourself.

 

Take it in. You'll get to drink coffee in the lounge and it'll be done in a day so you can go on vacation after. I wouldnt waste my frustration when I could be enjoying myself.

 

Thanks for the replies!

I was all about taking it to a shop when I woke up this morning. Now that I got the first estimate though I'm considering just pulling the hubs & finding a machine shop. They want $1,050 for parts & labor. 7 hours sounds a little excessive to me for a shop with all the right tools, but I've never attempted the job so what do I know? Not crazy excessive, but I guess I was expecting more along the lines of 5 hours.

 

Buy the bearings online (Genuine Toyota Parts). The remove the spindles and take them along with the new parts to a reputable shop to have them pressed in.

 

Agreed

 

It's a Koyo bearing and seals.

 

agreed.

Get the parts from @gunny1005 and take them in to a shop with your spindles. You'll save some cash on the DIY disassembly, and if you call ahead of time and set up a time to bring the parts it, I imagine it wouldn't take more than an hour or so...

 

I think he's in a time crunch already for ordering parts.

 

If you have the right tools, this is absolutely doable by a DIYer. You don't need to rely on a shop to replace your front wheel bearings.

The two videos below will show you everything you need. Use Part 1 to see how to remove and replace the knuckles from your rig. Use Part 2 to see how to do the press work.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZ2sOfVrnhU

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1TpOYj0sUpA

 

Damn Frenchee, you could have hit me up for help. We're practically neighbors.

 

I know! This was before I knew you lived in town.
Was an expensive mistake. Super stoked about the event coming up.

 

Does the hot and cold trick work for these bearings? The method is bearings in the freezer and spindles in the oven. Normally interference fit bearings will just drop in.

 

I bet it would help. Keep it in the oven temp range for safety unless you know more than I do what kind of treatment these things may have.

 

You can usually go to 250-275F with no problems, but not much more as you are getting to tempering temperatures which can start as low as 350. On the cold side a few $$$ of dry ice will get you to -100, while you average freezer is more like 0F or -10 at the coldest. In general steel's thermal expansion is .0000064 per degree F. A temperature difference of 312F gets you .002 of change. Most steel press fits are 0.0003 per inch. That means with that .002 the bearing or hub should drop in.

You only get one chance and at most a second or two.

 

It's doable. Takes a lot of force but a 20 ton press did the trick. Always better to DIY imo.

 

Thanks once again for all the posts. Timmah, your videos got me through the water pump & belts (thanks again for that!) - gonna at least have to watch what's going on before making a decision...gonna decide one way or another how I'm gonna get this done today. Vacation's off now anyway - turning into a staycation, but such is life. At least I got 9 days off work and live in a pretty nice playground already!

 

You're welcome. Maybe first see if there's a good shop near you with reasonable rates for this job. Ideally, it's a shop with experience with these Toyota knuckles and will do it right. With the experience I've had with this job, there's one thing that can hang you up and another thing to watch out for so you don't destroy the new bearing.

When pressing out the hub from the bearing, it's possible for the bearing to break apart and the inner race stays stuck onto the spindle of the hub. If that happens like it happened to my friend Jordan and I, you'll have to cut it off. We tried to get under the lip of the race with a bearing splitter but nothing I had would work. So, we took my Dremel tool and made cuts on opposing sides and then broke it off with a cold chisel. If you accidentally score the surface of the hub spindle, it's not a big deal. You just wouldn't want to cut deeply into it and weaken it.

When pressing the hub into the bearing, it's important to support the inner bearing race on the opposite side while you're driving in the hub on the other side. If you don't support the bearing, you run the risk of damaging your new bearing. I've heard of shops that have made this mistake so that's why it would be prudent to question the shop you bring your knuckles to in order to make sure it sounds like they know what they're doing.

If you find a good shop that will do it for an affordable price, that might be the way to go. If the shops want a lot of money for this, I'd say use the money you save and gain some tools you can use for future jobs. The Harbor Freight 20 ton press, the press sleeve kit and the press plates I've purchased have been used for lots of jobs and have paid for themselves many many times over. Good luck!

 

My vote was for bringing to a machine shop after removal. I had brought mine to a 4WD shop and they were really more about building mall crawlers than press work. Both bearings came apart and they broke their splitter. I thought they buggered one going back (they didn't) so I just brought it to a machine shop to try again. The guy said "yea, that happens a lot. It's no problem" I think they just can take so much more in stride doing tough work.

 

They can be a bitch.