Rear wheel bearings word of warning

[Swayze88]

So our XV (2012) has just hit 70,000 miles and a couple months ago one of the rear wheel bearings started to go bad. It was just before the Mot and I didn't have time to deal with it so let the Mot garage do the work. To get a subaru part was going to cost ~£180+vat so they ended up fitting an aftermarket part for around £120 + 2 hours labour. Anyway fast forward a couple months and the other side starts to rumble. I managed to get a subaru one from eBay for the price of an aftermarket one, and with some spare time thought I'd have a go myself. Last weekend I watched a few YouTube videos and started taking things apart. All went well until the final removal of the assembly. That thing would not budge! I spent a couple hours trying everything to get it out with no luck. As time was marching on and my wife needed the car the next day I soaked what I could with penetrating spray, cut my losses and put it all back together. Fast forward to today. Having a better understanding of what I was getting myself into I went down to my friends unit so we could use the lift and have a better go at it. To start with we tried the same deal, put the 4 bolts through loosely from the back and hit them with a hammer. No go. Put everything back together loosely and roll car back and forward left and right to try and break the rust. No go. Three prong puller on the drive shaft/axle. I stopped when I thought I was going to wreck the CV joint. In the end we had to release the two non pillow /ball connections to the suspension (of a toltal 4) so we could get enough movement of the hub to pull the axle out. After that, bolt it all together again to hold it firm. We then tried another puller but couldn't get anything solid to pull against. Eventually it came down to getting the biggest socket we could onto the back of the housing and hitting it as hard as we could again and again. Anyway, once it popped out, I cleaned up the rust put a large amount of copper grease on and put the new one in.

So in short. If you have some rust on your car, don't trust the YouTube videos, and be prepared to get some use out your big hammer. If it doesn't go easily you might have to go to pound town on it. 

💪

[Swayze88]

[Mr B]

Trick on these is a long barrel air hammer .
Take all bolts out and try get it rotate a little using bolt hole ears for hammering .

Once moves a little swap to a chisel bit in the air hammer to work it out .

They can be a right c0(k without the air hammer .

[Swayze88]

13 hours ago, Mr B said:

Trick on these is a long barrel air hammer .
Take all bolts out and try get it rotate a little using bolt hole ears for hammering .

Once moves a little swap to a chisel bit in the air hammer to work it out .

They can be a right c0(k without the air hammer .

Good advice for anyone with an air hammer. I had a good go at the ears with a hammer and chisel to try and get it to rotate. But no luck. Maybe time to invest in an air hammer! 

[Mr B]

if you got air then proper long barrel is a game changer,  makes the impossible not only possible but quick & easy and less damaging over clumping stuff with large lump hammer ect ...

facom nano impact and air hammer 2 tools i couldn't be without, pretty cheap too both under £100, facom was at £99, decent air hammer start around £80 ...

[Dogconker]

My bearing is just starting to rumble and I have just hit 70k 

[XVGUS]

I can tell you without an air hammer you’ll be looking at 3-4hr job,plenty de block oil,hammering oh and swearing 😂

my dad and I replaced the n/s/r hub today and the old one looked like this when finished 🥵😳

[Swayze88]

Wow, that looks like a lot of brute force went into getting that out! How many miles were on the car for them to look like that? 

[ernieb]

That looks to have been a real pain it the BTM!

[XVGUS]

Yes plenty brute force just what you need when doing the job on the driveway!!!! NOT!

63k on the clock but that corner did take fair thump from a pothole just recently 🥺

[ernieb]

Interesting comments about potholes.  We all can tell stories of potholes as most roads in the UK have them but the situation seems to be getting worse rather than better.  Even worse now is the number of near misses I see where drivers try to avoid them swerving at the last second into traffic.  I've just reported one outside our house that was repaired, badly, a few years ago but has very quickly reopened and is now 90 x 50cm and spits stones onto the drive.

I've certainly seem cars with rims that have disintegrated as a result of potholes so the potential damage to the suspension and drive systems must be high.

Anyway glad you got it sorted.

[Mr B]

^

you can send a damages claim into your local council .

i've supplied paper work for couple customers over the years, if do your homework and got the time it gives the useless councils some agro and some of you money back 😄

[Backed-out]

Just done a rear wheel bearing (hub assembly)  change on a 2007 outback - some rust but not too bad. Had access to some decent tools borrowed from my work which proved invaluable : Good 3 arm puller to gt the hub off and a large torque wrench to get the 240Nm preload weh replacing the shaft nut right. The real key was a good 48hr pre-soak of the bolts and the back of the hub with 3in1 penetrating oil spray. Also freeing off the staking of the axle nut before trying to unscrew it.  Even with all this still a bit of a struggle - had to use a tapered drift to get the hub free of the brake back plate, supporting the whole lot on a wooden block on the bearing only from the back, tapping right on the inside edge of the plate, inside the handbrake assy. (You don't need to take this off). 

So Yes - youtube vids quite miss leading.  

[Swayze88]

Had to do the front right wheel bearing over the weekend and was dreading it! It actually ended up being not too bad. Still had to do a fair bit of deconstruction to get access, but managed to chap it out using the 4 bolts. Maybe the fronts just get less rust? Was about 4 hours on the driveway with a bit of tea drinking while waiting for the hammerite to dry on the brake dust shield. 

Fingers crossed if I have to do one again it's this painless. 

[Mr B]

yeah front always cleaner as engine heat keeps it more dry .

More you do better methods you get on dealing with it, backs can get so bad very hard deal with at home with minimal tool options .

Best thing can do is spray all bolts/joints with a spray can of waxoyl or similar as makes night and day difference to corrosion level and lubes the threads .

[Rocket Gold Star]

Hi, Having tried to obtain a manual on my vehicle without success, I came upon this club, which I'm very glad of because I'm going to be the owner of this car for a long time. The thing is is that my rear wheel bearing were starting to go at just gone 30K miles which I find quite disgusting because I haven't done any serious off roading in the vehicle.

And my previous vehicle, a mere Fiat Punto 1.2L never needed any wheel bearings in 160K miles. I expected better from a Subaru. The price of a set of rear wheel bearings is also 3 times what I got for my old Punto when I sold it!

I really need some help with this one, has I am getting on a bit, and the last time I did any serious work on a car was to change the sump on the Punto and I was 65 then.

So where can I get the best advice to change the rear bearing? Also has an ex maintenance electrician, I have changed electrical motor bearing many times in my career. We used to use heat from a propane torch for this. Is this not possible to do with this job?    

[nictriumph]

best bet is to find someone with a bench or floor press,,,,hammers are old skool no good on new cars

[ernieb]

As has already been said probably best to find a local small garage with relatively low overheads to give you a quote.  you might be better sourcing the bearings and get someone to provide the labour who has some decent tools to extract and correctly replace the bearings.  The bearings of Subarus do seem to be a weak design feature.

[Jay762]

I have coated mine in molyslip so hopefully the rust will not be as bad if the time comes to replace them again

[Rocket Gold Star]

Hi, I must admit that I have never had the wheels off my Subaru yet. It's still under warranty till April. But there is more than one way to approach this problem. For a start Plus Gas is a far superior release agent than WD40. But obviously is best applied to run down vertically, which is a problem, before somebody tells me so.

Also if things are really stuck fast you could actually reduce the amount of metal in your way by means of a angle grinder slitting saw. If you got near to the shaft then heat applied with a propane torch would probably help. A mechanical fitter would not ponce about with metal in his way. He would burn it off with oxy-acetylene, if he was able to use it. Not dead sure if you can burn cast ferrous metal though without DANGER. Also I see that there is a lot of cheap hydraulic pulling gear for sale on eBay. Are they any good? Because 5 tons pulling power is a fair wack.

You would obviously have to try to protect the paintwork of your car with some kind of heat shield fabric. But I have seen guys changing exhaust system in Quick Fit TYPE establishments, using oxy-acetylene to burn off old exhausts. I await your comments. But if you stick a new one on you should put copper slip, or the modern equivalent on the shaft. Iv'e still got some old copper slip.

Also if you get the old one off in a repairable state. Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to source some new equivalent bearings and put them in the old hub?

Where there's a will there's a way!     

[Jay762]

I soaked mine for a week in plus gas then it took 11t in the press to shift it.

I prefer to use moly slip now around the brake areas - used copperslip for years but found more and more it would heat up then run staining my wheels

When it came to the fronts I approached it in the way suggested by Mr B with his air hammer and lots of heat. initially a lump hammer and bolster would not shift it and as I didn't have an air hammer I used my SDS drill with a chisel bit.

They did yield eventually but you can see the ring of rust, that was also matched on the hub as well they just go solid. I get the impression Subaru just assemble them dry.

They are just a nightmare task unfortunately

The most time effective way of dealing with them is replace the hub and bearing at the same time, far quicker but costs more in parts. The trade off is garage labour cost vs parts - Is the cost of a hub relative to the labour time spent removing the bearings worth it? Down to the individual for that choice

 

[ernieb]

Wow, interesting photos that clearly show the effort to get those off. This seems to suggest that the design/assembly procedures does not make any effort to think about maintenance.  Sadly, this does look to be a problem with many parts that might need replacement, e,g., spark plugs.

[Rocket Gold Star]

Hi,

    It all depends how much money you have got. I will probably replace the whole lot this time, but if you save the hub you can prepare it for a replacement next time around. With only 37K on the clock, I might be lucky that the rust hasn't locked things up yet. I don't have the facilities for an 11 ton press. Looks like these Japanese Geezers aren't as perfect as I thought they were. It's cheaper to run a Fiat Punto, but it's no good off road. I bet it's cheaper to run a Land Rover also, because of the popularity of the make. Trouble is they use a lot of fuel, and are said to be unreliable.   

[Rocket Gold Star]

Iv'e just looked up the best anti-seize paste Iv'e ever used. This was at a power station, and it was issued to me because they had nowt else. It's called Rocol 797. It's classed as being dodgy for cancer, but your not going to use it everyday. The cost is £114 for a 500 gram tin.

[D3lux]

As one of those bad guys who works in a main dealer (not a Subaru one, now) we have the same problem with wheel bearings. Subaru ones arent the worst!

We try to make sure we have everything ready beforehand. The technique we use is to roadtest the car to get a bit of heat into everything then try and strip it before it cools down! Doesnt always help remove the bearing assembly from the hub but usually frees off the CV joint from the centre.

We try to keep a supply of old cylinder head bolts for removal too. These can be screwed in from behind and struck to get things moving, have used this method any time I have replaced XV or similar wheel bearings. Mitsy Shogun ones seem to work best!

If it makes you feel any better, most modern overcomplicated, cheaply made German prestige makes use similar wheel bearings but bolt them to alloy hubs!! Any metallurgists reading this? Have seen several colleagues split the super expensive hub trying to remove the corroded/welded in wheel bearing.