Front Wheel Bearing Replacement ?'s

Hello all,

I have a moaning, groaning, droning, grinding front wheel bearing. Actually both front wheel bearings were doing this. We changed the right front bearing several years back and then I had to park the vehicle. I am in the process of reclaiming it and after my tune up I'm ready to tackle the left front wheel bearing.

The symptoms are a cycling moaning-grinding noise that does not go away in 4WD and is more prevelant at low speeds, at high speeds it sounds more like tire noise. I think its the fronts cause I can feel it in the steering wheel but at 200K miles it could be the rears as well. I've changed the fluid in the front and rear diff to address this but it didn't help. So, I'm after the front this time. I would like to ask a couple of questions, your insight will accompany me with the FSM and a decent set of tools.

When we changed the front a long time ago I don't remember if we removed the shock absorber. The FSM says to remove it, but honestly I can't see why. I should just be able to take off the CV, lower ball joint, upper ball joint and tire rod to remove the steering knuckle. Then i will take the knuckle to a shop that has at least a 50 ton press to press out the old bearing and hub and press in the new. Anything wrong with this? Do I really need to remove the shock absorber?

Also, I am buying a timkin sealed bearing from Rock Auto to replace it. Since this is a sealed bearing then I shouldn't need to purchase the oil seals. You need the oil seals for a bearing that is not sealed. With a sealed one I can just reuse the old ones as a dust cap, maybe?

I need to purchase a 35mm socket for the nut on the CV axle, correct?

All I need to do is get the steering knuckle off and the shop can take care of the rest, right? (seals, snapring, spacers, press out hub, press out bearing, reassemble).

Am I missing something here? It seems like it should be more complicated than this.

Thanks in advance

 

I do believe you need a 35mm socket for the cv. Also like you said, I just took the knuckle off and dropped it off at the shop and they took care of it.

 

Will this only work on a 99 and below Tacoma? Or are they the same up front? I have an 04 Tacoma DCSB 4x4. Is it different from 2000 - 2004?

 

Thanks! It looks like that lower ball joint will come off with the four bolts, along with the tie rod. The upper requires a special tool in the FSM, I can pick up a ball joint press from some retailer. Is that upper ball joint going to be a huge pain to uninstall?

I have no idea, sorry. I'm having a hard enough time figuring out my 96. I do know that somewhere on TW there is a link to a FSM download (or something of that nature). This might help.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-ive-done-the-work-you-save-the-money.288282/

It looks like his setup will only fit the bolt on style, and mine is not (I have press in style). I asked him if he could produce a setup for me but he says its not practical since the bearing is pressed into the steering knuckle. Based on that, and the fact that he doesn't offer his setup for pre 2005 4x4, I would say that you have a bearing pressed into a steering knuckle like mine. I really have know idea, I'm a novice, you'll have to crawl around under there and look at it to be sure.

 

96 to 2004 are all the same. Manual hubs are a little different, they have a lock ring on the back side of the bearing.

You can rent ball joint press from autozone for free. With the press it's not to bad of a job.

 

I'm guessing I need to pull the lower ball joint/control arm and cv nut first so I can move the upper control arm down to get that press on it?

 

I just replaced my uca with light racing and I don't think I touched the lower ball joint or anything when doing so. Just jack up the front end and get the weight off of it. Bit it will work either way.

 

the sealed bearings are not as sealed as you think, buy the $3 oil seal for christs sake, its not going to put you in the poor house and will keep crap from building up in there where it shouldn't be

 

lol, yeah I did. Its pretty obvious when you see the price.

 

Thanks, thats good to know, after looking at it again I think I can get it to work. Its my first time, so i'm trying to "imagine" my way through to limit the amout of surprises I have.

 

Success!

So I managed to get this done thanks to the advise here (and elsewhere). I searched the forums for a good write up and couldn't find one, so it occurred to me that I ought to create one, but I was pressed for time and didn't.

I will however offer some advise for anyone that comes along and reads this. On the first generation pickup all you have to do to remove the lower control arm is remove the four bolts that hold the lower control arm/ ball joint to the spindle/steering knuckle. When you unbolt that, you'll find that it removes the tierod, and balljoint at the same time. The axle nut under the dust plate comes off easliy enough with a 35mm socket and breaker bar(+ 4 ft cheater bar).

The tricky part for me was getting the upper ball joint out of the upper control arm. I tried putting the castle nut back on the ball joint upside down and hitting it with a hammer, but I was afraid of hitting it to hard. I also tried hitting the upper control arm up to break the tapered joint of the ball joint bolt x upper control arm. That didn't work either, probably because I wasn't using a big enough hammer and I was afraid to hit it hard. I ended up going to autozone and renting two kinds of pitman arm pullers. The standard pitman arm puller was not wide enough to fit on the upper control arm and the adjustable one would not adjust far enough out. The bolts for adjusting that puller were only 4 inches long, so I swung into the parts store again and picked up a similar 6" bolt and that gave me enough room to mount it. At that point I was able to crank down on the puller and pop the ball joint out of the upper control arm.

I didn't press the bearing out of the steering knuckle, I took it to a shop and let them do it. When it was done reassembly was a snap. I did end up putting a screwjack in the wheel well to force the upper control arm down (since it has tension on it and wants to stay up). Doing that I was able to squeeze that tapered bolt into the upper control arm and tighten up the castle nut.

Make sure you torque the lower ball joint bolts to 59 ft lbs, and check them often if you don't use lock-tite. Lots of thread about them coming out.

$102 OTC 6497 Pitman Arm Puller, Max. Spread 3 1/4 in

Amazon.com: OTC 6497 Super Duty Pitman Arm Puller: Automotive

The above link shows the tool I used to get the tapered fit ball joint bolt out of the upper control arm. I just had to replace those bolts with the wingnuts on them with a 6 inch bolt to fit the upper control arm.