Wheel Bearing Replacement

Probably not safe, but I drove on mine for two years like that. When i took it off, it was definitely worn! I don't know how my wheel didn't fall off!

 

Haha, I'd say you got me beat on time there. I just remember when every drive started to be like "I hope this isn't the one" it was time to stop tempting fate.

 

What is the top tier choice?

 

For me, one of them would've been OEM, however, I didn't feel like buying the piece parts, pressing them together, etc. I wanted a plug & play complete assembly. The cost & time savings was nice, although I might be paying for it sooner down the road...we shall see. But so far so good, as many others have attested to on here.

 

I got mine from rock auto over a year ago. So far so good. A lot of trail/water/mud no problems yet.

 

So how can you tell exactly which side is bad? I am having a hard time figuring it out as my hearing is not as good as when I was 18 yrs old. When driving, when I follow a road that curves right, the noise goes away. Does that mean is the passenger side? When I go the opposite side, the noise remains regardless if I am going straight or following the road curving left. Lastly, should I replace both sides? Trk is at 104k miles for a 2007.

 

FWIW OP, I did mine this morning with basic hand tools. $70 for a hub assembly, about 1h in the garage. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you're on the fence.

 

Buy all new seals or do it all over again soon after like 40k. Water and sand from the road gets in between CV axle and spindle. I was at160k and all seals were toast and 2nd set of bearings toast on same side. I did both this time for piece of mind

 

Assembly came with new seals. I'm hoping that at 200k I'll be upgrading to something newer, finances permitting.

 

So, you got a bearing, hub, bolts, and 3 seals for $70? That works out to about $15 for the bearing. Call me skeptical, but I don’t see a $15 bearing lasting very long.

 

It is probably the LH/driver's side if the sound goes away on a RH turn; the axial load on the bad bearing silences it. It would be smart to change both, or at least do the other side when you can. ~100k miles seems to be a common failure point from threads here.

 

I pressed my old ones apart, bought OE Toyota bearings, aftermarket seals, and reassembled them. The hubs do wear where the seal contacts them, and it's a decent amount of work to do it this way; so, if you have access to a press, I think the best way is:
Buy OE Toyota bearings online thru a dealer at discount price vs local. I think I paid ~$130 ea side for the bearings.
Buy aftermarket seals from Rock Auto, or similar
Buy new aftermarket hub assemblies
Press them together.

If you buy a new hub, the job will take less than half the time vs pressing apart, cleaning up the hubs, etc. If I have to do mine again, I'll buy a set of aftermarket hubs unless there is an issue determined with them in the future. So far the aftermarket hubs seem ok. If you buy all new parts, you can assemble them one day after work, and then change them on your day off. Pressing the hub out from the bearing, cutting the race off it, and cleaning up the hub takes time and is a PITA.

 

If you're troubleshooting just through noise coming & going then it could be either side, at least through my past experience. On my '08 Tacoma it was the RH/passenger side bearing that was going out. The noise would disappear with a LH turn (load on bearing silenced it). However, on past vehicles it was the opposite where both bearing and turn direction were the same (i.e. RH/passenger side bearing going out and noise disappearing with a RH turn (load removed from bearing silenced it)). So if you only plan to replace one side then you'd want to narrow down the root culprit side with more certainty and move on to physical inspection (i.e. wheel/tire wiggle test, measuring, etc.), unless of course you just decide to replace both. Take this for what it's worth, but I didn't have to replace mine until ~200k miles (mostly highway) and when I did I replaced both sides.

 

jack up truck. put one hand on top of tire and other on bottom. now wiggle. It will be the wiggly one. The first time it happened to me was going 60 around corner on the highway, heard something weird pulled over and the wb exploded. the wheel had so much play it was digging the break pad keeper bracket into the disc.

 

disk brakes with shoes?
never seen a wheel bearing explode, maybe it was the shoe?

my wheel bearing made noise for 5k miles before it was loose enough to feel
ebay sells the whole hub for about 100
install is only 6 more bolts than a brake job, big castle nut needs a good socket and my shaft had to be pounded out of the hub (salt area)

 

To diagnose a bad WB, jack it up and rotate the wheel and listen; you'll hear a bad WB long before it has any play in it- and that play can also be bad ball joints, so that's not a very good test method. If a WB has just started going bad, it will have no play, and you may not be able to hear it rotating the wheel, even with the brake pads removed, but it will make noise when driving the vehicle. If you turn the steering wheel when driving and the noise goes away, it's most likely a bad wheel bearing.

 

Mine had no play whatsoever when I had the trk on jack stands. It was also difficult to hear any noises when the tires where handspun. I think the bearings went bad around 80-90k miles ago. The noise just got worse/louder lately. My original question (see post #108), was mainly bc I was curious if the noise indicated my correct prediction.

I ended up replacing both of them this past Saturday. It was very easy for me as I think I am an avid weekend wrencher. The part that took longer was cleaning the surface rust. I am good now for another 80k miles (fingers crossed). It is crazy how loud those suckers can get. It was driving me nuts. I already have full-time tinnitus from the 33 plus years I spent in the service. Adding this constant drumming/rattle, was the end of my patience.

See you all down the trail.

 

Not a hard job if you have the right tools i just done one on my 2012 parts were 212.00 at Auto Zone

 

Yeah my ears have seen their better day too lol.

I guess you fixed it, but just for the thread in general, the old school trick of using a vacuum tube stuck in your ear and poking the other end around works really well. I did it on my kids chevy truck a few years back. Same thing, jacked it up and spun the wheel. Tube trick worked well. There was a marked difference between the left and right wheels, you could hear it with the tube.

 

Truck is currently at the alignment shop and they called during to tell me that my front left wheel bearing is on it's way out. They quoted me something over $500 to replace and I declined. However, looks like this will be a project coming up soon.

From reading this thread it sounds like I need to buy a complete assembly from RockAuto and i'll have to 'rent' a higher capacity torque wrench (mine only goes up to 120lb IIRC). Otherwise it sounds like it's a fairly easy job if you can do brakes, which I can.