Lisle Wheel Bearing Tool

I remove the whole hub at the ball joint and the two bolts on the strut so that I can change the lower ball joint and with the hub out you just flip it over between two 4x4s and beat the hub right out and beat the bearing assembly right out and have to worry about saving anything just falls on the floor in the trash it goes Sand out the aluminum hub a little bit with a flap wheel so you're looking at silver not rust a little anti-seize goes a long way but the new one in and that's that while you have the bearing out it's smart to undo your lower ball joint connect it add your cotter pin and what have you with the bearing in the way it's harder to get the socket and to get all that undone usually when you're doing hubs you're going to want to do the ball joint at the same time if you can afford to do the struts now's a good time to do all of this at once It's quicker and you don't have to take it apart again and your alignment stays.

 

Tool looks like it'd work pretty well, as long as it doesn't pull the hub apart.

I wonder if that depends on how worn the bearing is.

 

You should replace wheel bearings and pairs and axles front set rear set It's the way to buy them at a discount too and all of that while you're doing the wheel bearings you should also go ahead and get the lower ball joints all this stuff has 200 plus k on it so you know that 19 or $20 a pop should be considered some point struts in the front especially should be coming up at this mileage something to consider then when you button it all back up getting alignment one time you should be good for 12 more years or better.

 

I do bearings as they wear out. It's another one of those jobs without much shared-labor benefit; it's a certain amount of work to do one, and if you're doing two you're gonna go to the other corner and do that all again.

On the "as they wear out" strategy, I did one on my last car in 2010 at around 160,000 miles, and another one 50,000 miles later in 2013, and never had to do either of the others in as long as I owned the car.

 

Yes I have 340K on a set right now and other than a little bit of noise that you really have to listen for not much happening but the suspension is getting way too springy and creaky so it's getting time to change struts and springs if I'm going to keep the car even as my work vehicle it's getting quite loud You can hear squeaking in the back end of the car so on and so forth One of the rear wheel bearings is getting out of perfect round I'm starting to call some slap at this kind of mileage and what the kind of mileage I would like to end that I will probably just change the 4 bearings. And put on some mid-grade struts and springs and carry on to close to 600K I hope. So when I go to do this I'll just do this all at once the extra cost to do the other side of each axle to me just doesn't seem to be worth it to do it again and even 50,000 miles which comes up pretty quick for us for some reason. But yes I can stave off a little bit of work here and there by waiting but I've already got the tools out and the extra few minutes to do the other side and have it finished just seems like things I won't have to remember and keep up with which as I move forward and age seem to be more and more to keep up with.