Wheel Bearing How-To (w/o Hub Tamer)



I chose to do the wheel bearing with a 12 ton shop press ($127 @ harbor freight) instead of the Hub Tamer. Below are my step-by-step instructions. As a general rule, the bolts will be difficult to break loose, so soak them all with PB blaster a few hours before starting.

This document is intended to assist you with the job. If anything seems awkward, stop immediately and go to subaru- for clarification or assistance.

1. Clean shipping grease from wheel bearing and replace with high quality bearing grease (search subaru- for “bearing grease” to find out how)

2. Jack up vehicle and support with jack stands

3. Remove wheel & tire assembly

4. Engage e-brake and loosen axle nut (32mm, #25 below). Axle nut is behind the small bronze colored cap on the end of the hub (#27 below). Remove this cap (w/flat blade screwdriver or similar) to get access to nut. Also, part of the axle nut is punched into a small slot in end of the hub. Pry that small section free from the slot so that the bolt can rotate freely. The friction between the e-brake and the rotor should be sufficient to hold the hub still while you break the nut free. Do not yet remove the nut.

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5. Start disconnecting everything attached to the knuckle (it’s called the rear housing in the Subaru manual)

Disconnecting everything requires a bit of special attention

1. Disconnect the Brake Caliper

1. The brake caliper has 2 bolts holding it to the knuckle. I believe they are 14mm bolts. See bolt #32 in below picture. That is the top bolt. The other is at the same place, but on the bottom half of the knuckle.

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2. Remove these bolts and pull caliper off of rotor. It will take some wiggling and moderate effort to get it to slide off. Tie loose caliper to strut spring using bailing wire (or something similar). Tie it as high up as you can to keep it out of the way.

2. Remove Brake Rotor

1. The brake rotor is held onto the hub via friction & the lug nuts. You’ve already removed the lug nuts, so now all you have to do is overcome the friction. This may be tough, though, depending upon where you live (rust).

2. Spray the blue area pictured below with penetrating oil/PB blaster

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3. On the brake rotor, there should be at 2 extra threaded holes, as shown above in red. Some aftermarket rotors won’t have this, so those people ignore this shortcut. For those with the hole, simply thread a 6mm bolt (10mm head) into this hole and keep tightening it. As the bolt threads into the hole, it will come into contact with the hub and push the rotor off the hub. Keep threading until the rotor is loose enough to pull off. Make sure e-brake is disengaged or it won’t come off.

4. For those without this hole, good luck. You can bang on the rotor with a rubber mallet, but it will take quite a bit of banging to get it to break free. Best bet is penetrating oil. For those in dry climates, removing the rotor may not be so difficult because there is no/little rust binding the rotor to the hub.

3. Remove and disconnect the e-brake

1. The e-brake is held to the knuckle via 2 small spring-loaded pins, (components circled blow in red). Once these pins are removed, remove the spring circled in blue. After this spring is off, the whole e-brake can be removed. However, there are about 10 pieces that have to go back the right way. Before doing anything with the e-brake, I suggest taking pictures of how every part of it looks so that you can reference them upon re-assembly. This saved my a$$!

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2. Disconnect e-brake cable by simultaneously compressing tension spring and pulling cable out of its collar. This will be somewhat obvious once you have the e-brake removed.

4. Remove the transverse link bolt.

1. This bolt takes a good amount of effort to brake loose. Mine wasn’t even rusty and it was a pain in the butt. In the drawing below, #18 is the bolt you’re after. You will have to have a wrench or ½” drive socket on the bolt head, and on the nut #17. If you only work on one side (just the head or just the nut), the other side will just turn and you’ll get nowhere. With this bolt, just rely on physics. My 200 ft-lb impact wrench could not break it loose. Get as long of a breaker bar as you can for the head and for the nut, and have 1 person working on each one simultaneously. For reference, it took me (190lb) leaning on a 2’ extension on one end, and my roommate (260lb) on a 2’ extension on the other end to break this one loose. My advice is to have a replacement bolt on hand in case you break it, because you very well might. ;-)

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2. Leave the bolt in the hole to keep things rigid enough for removing the next bolt

5. Remove the lateral link bolt

1. This bolt, #20 in the picture below is more difficult to break loose than the last one. It holds the trailing arm (red) to the knuckle. It’s shorter than the last bolt w/a 17mm head. Use the same brute force technique on this bolt as the last one. Might want to have a replacement on hand. With this one, if you only work on one side (just the head or just the nut), your force will just distort the bushing, #7, and you’ll get nowhere.

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2. Once loose, remove this bolt and the bolt from 4.4

6. Remove the strut bolts

1. There are 2 bolts that hold the strut to the knuckle. Remove these bolts. As you pull out the 2nd of these bolts out, there will be nothing supporting the knuckle. It will want to flop down, so you must support it. Once all is loose, remove the axle nut, pull the knuckle straight away from the vehicle and off the axle.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’VE REMOVED THE KNUCKLE. NOW IT’S TIME TO PLAY WITH THE PRESS =D

BEFORE USING THE PRESS, BE FAMILIAR WITH THE TERMINOLOGY FROM THE BELOW DRAWING. I WILL REFER TO IT FROM HERE ON.

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1+2 = Knuckle or Housing

17+18 = hub & lug nuts

20 = ABS tone wheel

21 = rear wheel bearing

22 = snap ring

23 = outer seal

24 = inner seal

25 = axle nut

Also important to know: The wheel bearing should come shipped to you as 1 piece that can be divided into 4 pieces.

Piece #1 – outer race – the largest diameter metal ring portion of the wheel bearing

Piece #2 & #3 – inner races – these are the two inner pieces of the bearing that actually house the rollers

Piece #4 – plastic shipping ring – holds #2 and #3 together during shipping. Once the ring is pushed out of the center of the bearing, the outer race can be separated from the inner race. You will need to separate the 3 pieces in order to clean out the shipping grease and install high quality bearing grease.

1. Remove outer oil seal

2. Use flat head screwdriver to remove snap ring that was below outer oil seal

3. Press out the hub. To press this out, setup your press so that the rod will press down only on the back side of the hub (red arrow in diagram above). Make sure that whatever metal piece you use to transfer the press’s force onto the hub DOES NOT ALSO PRESS ON THE INNER RACE OF THE BEARING. If I recall, I used a 27mm socket to do this (rest the 27mm socket on top of the back side of the hub, then press down on the top of the socket).

i. Further clarification…look at the knuckle from the back side. You’ll be able to see part of the wheel bearing, and pressed into the inner race of the wheel bearing will be a metal ring (this is the back side of the hub). On the inside of this ring, there are splines. These are the splines that line up with splines on the rear half shaft (which is still attached to the SVX).

Keep the press’s rod coming down until the hub falls out the bottom. Have somebody there to hold/catch the hub to avoid any damage.

ii. When the hub comes out, there’s a 99% chance that it will still have an inner race pressed onto it. The next task is to remove the inner race from the hub.

4. To remove the inner race from the hub, you need a bearing separator. You can get it at Harbor Frieght for $20.

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a. Place the hub into this tool so that the opening in the tool clamps down tight around the back side of the hub. In order to get access, you will have to remove the ABS tone wheel (5 small alan/allen/whatever head bolts).

b. Press down on the back side of hub w/27mm socket. Lay the tool across the support base of the press in order to prevent bearing inner race from going down also. Keep pressing until hub is pressed completely through inner race.

5. Press outer race out of knuckle

a. To do this correctly you will need to find an object that has the correct outside diameter to press on the outer race of the bearing. However, since your bearing is already ruined, there is no harm done by pressing on the inner race (if you cannot find something large enough to press only on the outer race). Either way, press on the bearing from the rear of the knuckle so that it comes out the front of the knuckle.

6. Thoroughly clean knuckle where bearing will sit (brake cleaner is good for this)

7. Put thin layer of bearing grease on inside of knuckle where bearing will sit (make sure all brake cleaner is wiped off before doing this)

8. Press new bearing into knuckle

a. This is a critical step, so be precise and take your time

b. Ensure that bearing has plastic retainer ring installed on inner race to hold the bearing assembly together during pressing.

c. To press in new bearing, you need to find an object that is the same overall diameter as the new bearing’s OUTER race. An object that works perfectly for this is your old bearing’s outer race (. DO NOT PRESS ON THE INNER RACE OF THE NEW BEARING!!! Simply place the old outer race on top of the new outer race, and press the new bearing into the knuckle. Press new bearing in from front of knuckle. Continue pressing until bearing is tight against the metal retainer ring formed into the knuckle. At no point should the press take enormous amounts of force. Ensure that your press and the knuckle are at 90* so that bearing presses in straight.

9. Re-install snap ring. Ensure that spring clip sits in the groove on the outboard edge of the new bearing

10. Install new outer oil seal. Will need to be pressed in (again, use old outer race as press tool), but pressing effort is very light.

11. Install new inner oil seal. Will need to be pressed in (again, use old outer race as press tool), but pressing effort is very light.

12. Re-install ABS tone wheel

13. Press hub back into housing.

a. While you are pressing the hub into the bearing’s inner race, the hub will displace the plastic retainer ring on the inner race of the bearing. This retainer ring is holding things together and keeping the inner races from separating from each other during the press. In order to keep the inner races from moving once this ring is displaced, you need to support the inner race on the back/bottom side of the bearing. To do so, when you are setting up this press, simply take the two inner races from the old bearing, and stack them on top of each other. Then set the knuckle/bearing assembly on top of these inner races so that the hole in the new inner race lines up with the holes of the stacked inner races. Now, when you press the hub into the new inner races, they cannot displace because they are being supported by the old inner races. If you don’t do this, the inboard inner race of your new bearing will fall out of the rear of the knuckle as you press the hub into place.

Now you should have a complete knuckle with a new bearing installed. Now just re-install the knuckle. Don’t forget to re-install the ABS sensor and e-brake cable into the knuckle, and get your pictures so you know how to put the e-brake back together (

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Inner race of bearing

Clamp tool around this part of hub.

Press Force

Socket

Bearing Separator

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