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Wheel Bearing / Hub Assembly Replacement Comments
09-11-2010, 04:53 PM
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Wheel Bearing / Hub Assembly Replacement Comments
My right rear wheel bearing went bad recently 
and I just replaced it last night with the timkin assembly (nice piece) from autozone. I found one decent writeup to use as a guide: http://www.c5help.com/C5_Rear_Wheel_Bearing.htm
Anyway, I thought I'd post a couple of tips for others that have to do this...
It's all pretty straightforward until you get to the point where you need to separate the lower ball joint from the aluminum upright that your hub and e brake assembly sit up against. The nut that holds the ball joint on is a lock nut with a 6mm hex cut in. Since the joint is seated on disassembly, you'll be able to turn the bolt with a 21 mm box end wrench without using a 6mm allen key to hold the bolt. Buy or rent a fork type ball joint puller... It's $13 at Advance Auto Parts and worth it. To separate the ball joint you loosen the nut until the top of it is flush with the top of the bolt it fits on and put the fork between the top of the nut/bolt and the bottom of the halfshaft (axle). At this point you have two options:
Do what I did and carefully (but it will take a considerable amount of force) pry upwards on that motherfu***r until you feel the joint separate.
or
What I should have done and put a bottle jack with a block of wood on top of it underneath the fork handle and jack it up until the joint separates.
Once you have it separated, put a jack with a block of wood on top of it under the hub and raise it up so that you can get a little more clearance between the top of the lock nut and the halfshaft (axle) because you are going to have to get an allen key in there to keep the hex from turning while you loosen the nut the rest of the way and remove it.
At this point just stop what you're doing and take a dremel with a metal cutting wheel (or whatever you want to use to cut an allen key) and cut enough off the short end of a 6mm allen key to allow you to get it onto the hex. I'd recommend taking a metal file to all six sides after the cut to get rid of any burrs. Shouldn't take much filing, but a little touch up would be okay. Now get somebody else to hold the shortened allen key into the hex while you remove the lock nut.
The rest of the dis-assembly and the installation of the new hub/bearing is really pretty easy. The next pain in the a$$ is when you've finished installing the new assembly and you've got the T55 bolts back in and you've gotten the CV axle back into place and the huge 33mm nut on the end of it started (buy or rent a 33mm axle socket from an auto parts store) and it's time to re-seat the ball joint. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've done a pretty good amount of wrench work for a 25 year-old... and this part was a gigantic pain in the A$$ (until I figured out the easy way to do it). All of the instructions I've found say that you should start the lock nut onto the bolt using a shortened hex key to hold it in place until there's between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch between the nut and the bottom of the aluminum upright that you're screwing it into. Then you're supposed to take the ball joint separator and wedge it between the bottom of the upright and the underside of the lock nut and pry downwards until the ball joint snaps back into place.
Maybe it works for some people... but for me it was just not gonna happen. I hit the gym five days a week and I was prying up on the damn thing so I hard I was genuinely concerned I was going to break something. By the way, there are a lot of things there that you really don't want to break...
1. The rubber safety boots at the joints. They are packed full of grease, so breaking one would mean a huge mess and the inconvenience and expense of replacing the entire joint.
2. The threads on the ball joint bolt, the bolt itself, the lock nut. Break any of those and you're going to have to replace the entire joint.
3. The aluminum upright. This is really easy to dent, crack, etc. Be careful with it.
Anyway, after about ten minutes of screwing around trying to pry the ball joint back into place I decided it was not gonna happen. I had spoken with Randy Rippie at DRM the night before (great guy and very knowledgeable) and he mentioned that some people have used a ratchet strap to pull the joint back into place. I still had a couple of transmission jacks from when I did my clutch swap a couple weeks ago with ratchet straps attached to them. I started the lock nut over the threads using an allen key, then I put a block of wood on the transmission jack and jacked it up under the ball joint to put upward pressure on it then I pulled the ratchet strap over the top of the aluminum upright and tightened it as far as it would go. After making it really tight I was able to torque down the lock nut with the 21mm box end wrench without using the hex key to hold it.
You don't need a transmission jack to do this job, a floor jack or a bottle jack with a regular ratchet strap will work just fine.
The only other part of the job that was a pain (again, until I found the easy way) was getting the emergency brake spring seated into the shoe properly. Somebody should give this guy a medal http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-t...y-49-95-a.html . I found this after screwing around with it for over 30 minutes and I had it on in about 30 seconds. The process is a little hard to describe. I'm putting aftermarket studs on the rear hubs pretty soon, I'll try to take a video of this process and update.
I hope this helps someone. Now that I've done it once, I could probably do it again in less than 2 hours.
Diclaimer: Perform work on your vehicle at your own risk. The information contained above is for guidance purposes only and no warranty or assurance regarding the accuracy or safety of the content is extended. All work should be performed by a properly trained professional
and I just replaced it last night with the timkin assembly (nice piece) from autozone. I found one decent writeup to use as a guide: http://www.c5help.com/C5_Rear_Wheel_Bearing.htmAnyway, I thought I'd post a couple of tips for others that have to do this...
It's all pretty straightforward until you get to the point where you need to separate the lower ball joint from the aluminum upright that your hub and e brake assembly sit up against. The nut that holds the ball joint on is a lock nut with a 6mm hex cut in. Since the joint is seated on disassembly, you'll be able to turn the bolt with a 21 mm box end wrench without using a 6mm allen key to hold the bolt. Buy or rent a fork type ball joint puller... It's $13 at Advance Auto Parts and worth it. To separate the ball joint you loosen the nut until the top of it is flush with the top of the bolt it fits on and put the fork between the top of the nut/bolt and the bottom of the halfshaft (axle). At this point you have two options:
Do what I did and carefully (but it will take a considerable amount of force) pry upwards on that motherfu***r until you feel the joint separate.
or
What I should have done and put a bottle jack with a block of wood on top of it underneath the fork handle and jack it up until the joint separates.
Once you have it separated, put a jack with a block of wood on top of it under the hub and raise it up so that you can get a little more clearance between the top of the lock nut and the halfshaft (axle) because you are going to have to get an allen key in there to keep the hex from turning while you loosen the nut the rest of the way and remove it.
At this point just stop what you're doing and take a dremel with a metal cutting wheel (or whatever you want to use to cut an allen key) and cut enough off the short end of a 6mm allen key to allow you to get it onto the hex. I'd recommend taking a metal file to all six sides after the cut to get rid of any burrs. Shouldn't take much filing, but a little touch up would be okay. Now get somebody else to hold the shortened allen key into the hex while you remove the lock nut.
The rest of the dis-assembly and the installation of the new hub/bearing is really pretty easy. The next pain in the a$$ is when you've finished installing the new assembly and you've got the T55 bolts back in and you've gotten the CV axle back into place and the huge 33mm nut on the end of it started (buy or rent a 33mm axle socket from an auto parts store) and it's time to re-seat the ball joint. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've done a pretty good amount of wrench work for a 25 year-old... and this part was a gigantic pain in the A$$ (until I figured out the easy way to do it). All of the instructions I've found say that you should start the lock nut onto the bolt using a shortened hex key to hold it in place until there's between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch between the nut and the bottom of the aluminum upright that you're screwing it into. Then you're supposed to take the ball joint separator and wedge it between the bottom of the upright and the underside of the lock nut and pry downwards until the ball joint snaps back into place.
Maybe it works for some people... but for me it was just not gonna happen. I hit the gym five days a week and I was prying up on the damn thing so I hard I was genuinely concerned I was going to break something. By the way, there are a lot of things there that you really don't want to break...
1. The rubber safety boots at the joints. They are packed full of grease, so breaking one would mean a huge mess and the inconvenience and expense of replacing the entire joint.
2. The threads on the ball joint bolt, the bolt itself, the lock nut. Break any of those and you're going to have to replace the entire joint.
3. The aluminum upright. This is really easy to dent, crack, etc. Be careful with it.
Anyway, after about ten minutes of screwing around trying to pry the ball joint back into place I decided it was not gonna happen. I had spoken with Randy Rippie at DRM the night before (great guy and very knowledgeable) and he mentioned that some people have used a ratchet strap to pull the joint back into place. I still had a couple of transmission jacks from when I did my clutch swap a couple weeks ago with ratchet straps attached to them. I started the lock nut over the threads using an allen key, then I put a block of wood on the transmission jack and jacked it up under the ball joint to put upward pressure on it then I pulled the ratchet strap over the top of the aluminum upright and tightened it as far as it would go. After making it really tight I was able to torque down the lock nut with the 21mm box end wrench without using the hex key to hold it.
You don't need a transmission jack to do this job, a floor jack or a bottle jack with a regular ratchet strap will work just fine.The only other part of the job that was a pain (again, until I found the easy way) was getting the emergency brake spring seated into the shoe properly. Somebody should give this guy a medal http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-t...y-49-95-a.html . I found this after screwing around with it for over 30 minutes and I had it on in about 30 seconds. The process is a little hard to describe. I'm putting aftermarket studs on the rear hubs pretty soon, I'll try to take a video of this process and update.
I hope this helps someone. Now that I've done it once, I could probably do it again in less than 2 hours.
Diclaimer: Perform work on your vehicle at your own risk. The information contained above is for guidance purposes only and no warranty or assurance regarding the accuracy or safety of the content is extended. All work should be performed by a properly trained professional
Last edited by cdkcorvette7; 09-11-2010 at 05:14 PM.
10-24-2010, 10:38 PM
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Member Since: Sep 2008
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I attempted to do this today and got discouraged by the 2nd bolt I tried to take out. This diy kinda glosses over the fact that the caliper bracket bolts are a huge pita. If the bolt is properly loc-tited and torqued you are gonna need way more than a 21mm combo wrench (inside the wheel well) to get em out. it was too late in the day to go get a 21mm socket and try a breaker bar, air impact would be ideal. Search for brake rotor replacement to get a better idea of the pain.
10-24-2010, 11:47 PM
#3
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I attempted to do this today and got discouraged by the 2nd bolt I tried to take out. This diy kinda glosses over the fact that the caliper bracket bolts are a huge pita. If the bolt is properly loc-tited and torqued you are gonna need way more than a 21mm combo wrench (inside the wheel well) to get em out. it was too late in the day to go get a 21mm socket and try a breaker bar, air impact would be ideal. Search for brake rotor replacement to get a better idea of the pain.
Last edited by cdkcorvette7; 10-24-2010 at 11:52 PM.
