Impreza wheel bearings
 

First question: Is this the right part of the forum to ask about wheel bearings?

My MY98 Impreza Turbo has failed its MoT on excessive play in the N/S front and rear wheel bearings (roundabout fun?). I've changed wheel bearings on other cars but not this one yet. I'd appreciate any advice on how easy/difficult it is, whether special tools are required etc. Is there any form of manual available, providing instructions/torque wrench settings?

you will need to have the bearing machine press to pull out n push in the new bearing

In the past I've removed the shells by careful application of hammer and cold chisel, and inserted the shells using the old shell as a 'dowell'.

Is there any special procedure to the tightening - e.g. tightening and loosening? Do you know the torque values for the driveshaft nuts?

I know I had mine done at the rear by a local garage, and they said, "Never again"!

Alcazar

Did they say why?

Parts, (from Subaru) wickedly expensive. Not an easy job, they broke something getting a bearing out and had to replace it at their cost.

Alcazar

Had mine changed not long ago, my98, turned out to be a real pig to do with seized suspension parts and all. It need new rear arms as the old ones had to be cut off, plus a five hour labour bill. On top of all that, I had to get the alignment set up again as the new suspension arms put it all out !! £500+

Hakon

i did mine on my calssic a good few months back, they were well buggered when i got to them, i couldnt get the bearing out so in the end i stripped everything off and took the hub do a garage for them to press them in and out propperly, plus make sure all the 3 (i think) seals go in the right way or you will be doing them again soon.
garage didnt charge too much for that, but then there was the allignment again plus around £70 is each for the bearings. not cheap.
wouldnt like to see the bill from the garage to do it all tho.
i found the torque settings for the centre hub nut when i did mine, if you want it a can find it somewhrere 4 u.

front and rear hubs are same settings 166-206Nm

I don't like the sound of these bad experiences! Are all the problems with the rear bearing, or both front and rear?

Subaru gave me a torque figure of 186 Nm for the driveshaft nuts, which is bang in the middle of scoobynewbie72's range.

Has anybody got any good experiences to cheer me up?

Having bought the new bearings (QH parts) I now know that the inner and outer shells are combined, so I expect to have to take the whole hub to a workshop, where there's a press.

I hadn't thought about the alignment, but I guess I would also have got stuffed for that if a garage was doing the job, so nothing I can do about it.

also remember the speedy sleeve

Que?

Well, I've now (finally) replaced the front and rear bearings that were part of the MoT failure. Can't say I found much slack in the rear one (that the garage pronounced dangerous), although the drive shaft nut had slipped (presumably due to inadequate lock deformation).

I've never encountered nuts and bolts which required so much torque to undo before. I invented new methods of doing it - using a scissor jack in one case - and I also now own a 2 foot breaker bar. The most stubborn bolt was the long bottom bolt at the rear. Even having taken the nut off, it didn't even want to turn - until a lot of lubrication and torque was applied (spread over several days). I damaged the bolt in the process so had to buy a new one from Subaru - but it was not hideously expensive.

I used a local garage to do the pressing work once I'd disconnected the housing from the car. They charged £25 for each bearing. (I gave them the QH parts to fit.)

So it's probably saved me £100s having done it this way but the car's been off the road for over 2 weeks and will now not get its MoT until the new year. Just as well I have access to another car or it would not have been practical at all.

Still don't know what scoobyboy means by a 'speedy sleeve'.

speedy sleeve goes on to make the seal a tighter fit so as to stop crap getting into the bearings as seals arnt a good fit without them