I'm in it now - Front wheel bearing/hub replacement

if you turn left and the noise gets louder its the left bearing, if you turn right its the right bearing, jack the tire off the ground and pull side to side and feel for play. the bearing hub on mine was corroded into the knuckle so bad I should have considered replacement, but after cleanup it was acceptable to me. The time and effort to remove it was considerable. the ball joint only cost $41 so I would just get a new one.

 

If you have one going bad do not wait, it did not take much pounding when I was trying to get mine off and it failed, that opened my eyes to why it needs addressed right away. If my other one starts making noise I will park the car and wait for the parts to come.

 

Talk to a girl at the store down the road that lost her wheel bearing, she said it started at the bottom of our hill, she made the store at the top when this happened friday, she is waiting there for the flat bed truck to pick it up and take it to a shop for repairs.

 

toyotapartsbarn.com
I would use this toyota dealership for parts again, they are located in ohio and the parts I ordered came to my address the next day!! I ordered the parts first thing 8am and by 1pm the the next day the parts were at my door.

 

05 in Wisconsin 136,000 Carrier was very corroded. splitting it with the carrier on the car was impossible. On an open bench vice with an 8 pound maul smacking a 1 1/2" 3/4 drive impact socket as a drift took probably 10 hits to release it. There was a LOT of corrosion of the aluminum carrier. That's why it was so tight the corrosion is bigger than the metal it comes from. I will reuse the carrier but when the other side goes I may get a new one, it took a lot of crude filing and sanding to get the bore large enough to accept the new hub. Attempting to split the unit at the face nearly ruined the carrier. About 5 hours including a trip to farm and fleet for a 1 3/16" 12 point socket. I would suggest loosening the axle nut before removing the wheel. Tomorrow it goes back on the car and I find out if that WAS the real problem!

 

Truly a great thread. My 06 has 198k and the sound in the front end is pretty distracting. have already bought the struts and shocks and am in the process of completing the front hub/bearings literally, in a few minutes. One question though. Having bolted up everything on the driver's side and pushed the brake piston clear out to the edge of the seal, I squeezed it back in and drove the car to see how it felt and the brake light, the VSC light and the ABS lights are all on and dont shut off. The brakes work well with good pedal and little fade, but whats the deal with the lights being on now when they werent before? What did I do wrong? please help. and thanks again

 

My guess is that you left the 12V battery connected when doing this work. The skid control ECU remains powered up even when the car is IG-OFF and can detect pressure applied to the system as the piston moved in and out of the caliper.

You're lucky that the piston did not shoot out of the caliper while the caliper was disengaged from the disc (this could happen if the brake pressure accumulator pump ran.)

What you'll need to do is to clear the DTC in the skid control ECU. You can do this by jumping pins 4 and 13 in the DLC3 connector, then make the car READY and depress the brake pedal at least 8x in a five-second period. Then remove the jumper wire. Consult the Toyota repair manual docs at techinfo.toyota.com for more info. Good luck.

 

Thank you, Patrick, for your reply. As useful as it is, however, it does me no good without knowing the physical location of the Skid Control ECU. Just as a sidebar, I bought the 2 day subscription to Toyota's information site and cant use it. I mean, maybe I'm too dumb to figure out how to read it. Anyway, if you know the location of the skid control ecu, i would really appreciate it.

 

The skid control ECU is located near the steering wheel, but it is not necessary to physically access this unit. You just need to find the OBD-II connector (aka DLC3) which is located under the steering wheel and will be visible when you look around, below the instrument panel.

Since you have access to the Toyota repair docs, try to find diagnostics for the electrically controlled brake system. Then find the instructions for DTC Check/Clear.

This will show you a diagram of the OBD-II connector and the pin numbering. The wide portion of the connector has pins numbered 1-8 and the narrow portion of the connector has pins numbered 9-16. When looking at the connector so that the wide portion is at the bottom, pin #1 is on the bottom right corner, while pin #9 is above pin #1.

Hope that helps.

 

Patrick, thanks soo much for all your info. Found the DLC3, counted the pins(three times) jumped it and Voila!! the lights turned off. Now as soon as my wife and I got in to test drive it and stepped on the brakes, they all turned on again, and of course the auto window function is still disabled, but I'll get to that later. The brakes do work and I think I will wait to take it to the dealer for rectification after I replace the suspension. Thanks again.

 

Okay, back again. My wife drives the car for a full week, puts almost 1000 miles on the old beast and the digital display suddenly goes to zero. She drives it to a local toyota dealer and they tell her the speed sensors are bad. Actually, they told her the whole wheel bearing/hub is bad, the pair I bought at another toyota dealer!! Anyway, if, while I was replacing the front hub/bearing assembly, I didnt remove the speed sensor, did I inadvertantly damage it? If I did, would the digital display still read for another week? Toyota Parts Barn has the speed sensors for $158 each. What do y'all think?

 

Okay, here's another update. The local toyota dealer is giving me the run-around regarding warranty-ing the hubs I bought from them. Like i said in the last post, my wife took the car to a dealer in Palm Desert and they said the hubs are bad, among other things. I go to the dealer in Redlands and they say they have to do another inspection ($180) to verify what the other factory trained technician found. If the hubs are indeed bad AND the installation was correct, they will warranty the parts. It all sounds very unprofessional and subjective to me and I've only been buying and fixing my own cars since 1972. Is there any way or anyone that can assist in all these shenanigans the dealers are pulling? I understand having to verify if a part is bad or not, but how many factory trained technicians does it take? how many times do I have to pay for the same service to arrive at the same conclusion? Do you know how much the dealer wanted to replace the hubs and bearings? $1600, for two $89 parts and labor. I, in my inexperience took three hours total for both sides, so it figures out to about $430/hr for labor. Unimaginable gall to even suggest charging that much. I'll stop now. I have other questions about the new speed sensors I just replaced tonight.

 

Besides the dealer telling your wife that the newly-installed front hubs are bad, do you have any objective evidence such as unusual noise or vibration being produced? Or is the only problem that your speedometer is not functioning?

 

Good morning, Patrick. Thanks for replying. The dealer said they heard that roaring sound, like I had heard with the old ones. Since I have replaced them, the roaring has actually gotten worse, more pronounced. I believe them, it just seems soo strange that both new ones would be bad from the git-go.

 

I wonder if that roaring sound is coming from some other root cause and your old bearings were actually OK?

 

Okay. I rotated front to back tires since the front ones were cupped. The back ones were marginally better, but just wanted to rule that out. What about the CV joints? Im not even sure what other parts rotate on the front end that would make this kind of noise. Thats why I replaced the hubs/bearings. Thank again for any help.

 

seems like you changed both bearings? Are both making noise? If so, either you put them in wrong, or something else is making the noise. It is not likely that both new bearings would be defective. Probable, but highly unlikely. Are both speed sensors bad? Again, it would be unusual for both to fail at the same time. You may have knocked them out of adjustment, or damaged them in the bearing change process.

 

Excellent Prices, it costs $97-105 each from most Southern California Dealers, special order item

 

What is it with Toyota troubles with wheel bearings. I have had many Honda's with much more mileage than the problem vehicles listed here, and never any of these kinds of wheels bearing/hub problems. A well sealed bearing should go half a million miles with no problems......

 

Several weeks ago, I changed the front right wheel bearing on my 04 prius with 209k
miles. For several weeks I had an intermittent noise, then changed to a steady drone from the front right. Some notes of interest......
The repair was fairly difficult to do, I broke two (cheap) 3/8 extensions taking off the brake caliper.
I removed the detent in the axle nut with a 3/8 drill bit and then a small punch.
The old bearing was tightly corroded in the steering knuckle, I had to separate this with a press with a heavy hydraulic jack. Took some photo's of the the inner side of the wheel bearing. I slightly bent the dust collar hammering a socket into the bearing hub bolts next to it, before I realized I had to simply take off the knuckle, there is just very little clearance. The dust collar pries off , without the shaft in the way it is then easy to install the new bearing (after cleaning off the old knuckle surface).
pictures of the old bearing from the inner side, note flange on the bearing hub bolts.

http://priuschat.com/forums/members/northwichita-albums-wheel-bearing-northwichita.html

link from BentleyPublishing on front wheel bearing repair.
https://wiki.bentleypublishers.com/display/tech/Front+wheel+hub+-+bearing,+removing+and+installing