Need help replacing wheel hub assembly... can anyone help me out?

[hevenz]

ok my car messed up. so what better way to tell you whats going on is to reprint the email i sent my mechanic...............Now here is my second question. I was at a friends house helping him move and after we were done I was leaving and as I was backing out I heard dragging ( tires) and I thought I had a flat. Well as I got out to look at my back drivers rear tire. The whole wheel was pushed in and was no longer straight were it would roll back kind of like from this [] to this //. I pulled forward about 3 feet and parked the car again. Took the wheel off and a bunch of bearings fell out. Pulled off the calipers and took off the rotor (sp?)….. Auto zone said they have the unit for like 130 bucks. So now my car once again is sitting peg legged in my driveway. *sigh* so to me it looks like a straight forward replacement… since I haven’t seen the actual part that they have I assume their assembly would include the bearings? I guess my question is it really simple as swapping out their part with mine? Or is there something else I have to do im not thinking of….. If I can do it myself ill be ok and I can get it there sat afternoon. But if there are other things I might as well have you do it I guess. If you need more info I can stop by tomorrow and show you what I took off.


And he writes back




the wheel bearing on your car is built into the hub, the part they are selling you is a complete replacement bolt in hub. you have to remove the axle, pop the lower ball joint, and then unbolt the old one to replace it with a new one. Sometimes an axle failure will actually cause what happened to you so it just depends if there is anything else wrong. nothing too hard...just time consuming. call up oreilly's, IIRC they are cheaper on this particular part. ask for a "wheel hub assembly"


Looking at my car... im not seeing what exactly what needs to be done.. any help from somebody who has done this would help ALOT!!!

 

[turbosax2]

Your mechanic is right. The wheel bearing is built into the hub and you will buy a complete replacement hub. If this happened to your rear wheel, there is no axles there to remove - he is thinking of the fronts. I did this recently but on the front of the car, not the rear. I'm not exactly sure how to do the rears but I used a slide hammer I rented from AutoZone to remove the assembly on the fronts.

 

[hevenz]

gotcha... so skipping the remove axel part... the only thing i gotta do is pop the lower ball joint. Whats involved in that?

 

[forcefed 95]

The have a ball joint press you can rent also from Autozone that allows you to press out the ball joint and press it back in with out damaging the ball joint.

 

[wret]

The reason for removing the ball joint or arm is to allow removal of the axle. Since you don't have to remove an axle you probably don't need to mess with the arms and joints. I haven't replaced rears but as long as you have access to the bolts at the back side of the knuckle, there's no need to remove anything else.

 

[perley03]

Pretty much straight forward. There are 3 ears on the wheel hub assembly, take out those three, whack the old bearing assembly with a hammer and it should pop out. Put in the new one, put the 3 bolts back in, then reattach the rotor and caliper and put on your wheel and you are done. Should take no more than 30 mins. to do.