Replace front brake dust shields

Well, you'll end up unbolting the calipers from the knuckles (easy), taking the rotors off the hubs (easy), separating the driveshafts from the hubs (easyish, if you have the right tool to unstake the lock nuts and then the right sockets to loosen them, and you have new locknuts on hand for reassembly), and separating the hubs from the knuckles.

The bad news is, those hubs are hub-bearing assemblies, and kind of pricey, and in some parts of the world they will come easily out of the knuckle as soon as you take the bolts out, but Chicago is probably not one of those places. If they do not come out easily, nobody around here has figured out how to force them out without damage to the bearings, which means you'll be wanting a pricey pair of new hubs to put in when you reassemble.

If you are not having bearing problems at the moment, it might make sense to put off the dust shield replacement until someday when you want to replace the bearings anyway, and then it doesn't suck that you have to replace the bearings.

 

Huh, there is such a "thing":

https://www.automobilemag.com/news/1973-volkswagen-thing/

 

The Thing was a thing.

Just not a big thing.

Or a popular thing.

Onto the next thing .

 

I'd try taking something like a 1/2" rod with a rag over the tip (just to stabilize it a bit), press the tip firmly against the dust shield lip where the interference seems to be, and give it wacks with a small sledge hammer.

 

I bought an air hammer a year or so ago. I don't know where it had been all my life.

 

My 2008 has the same scraping issue. I'm getting really tired of sounding like the guy who's dragging his muffler down the street.

Took the wheel and brake caliper off today, which was enough to show me that the scraping is happening at the very BOTTOM of the shield, where there's very room to bend it back. The shield has a rolled edge, I'm seriously thinking of getting in there with an angle grinder and flattening that off a bit. I don't want any part of disturbing the bearings, etc.

 

Just gonna drop this in here: if you DO take the bearing off/out, rethread the ABS-sensor bolt-hole. Replaced my right bearing twice and my left bearing once (or vice versa) and both ABS-sensor bolt-holes are corroded to %#*%$ and hanging on by (literally) a single thread.

You can probably drill them out and rethread them deeper (so you can simply use a longer bolt to hold the ABS sensor in place), but you can ONLY do this BEFORE you press the new bearings in.

Aluminium hub rotor (correct name?) and stainless steel bearings are the devils invention and Toyota decided to go with it...