So i just finished changing out my wheel bearing. man what a difference! the car feels like new again. cant remember the last time my car felt this smooth and is making me think that iv had this bad bearing for much longer then i realized. its been progressively getting worse and worse and yesterday when i drove on it the whole car was shaking and the grinding was louder then its ever been. i was seriously scared to drive and all the worst case scenarios were running through my head. once i got the wheel and the breaks off it was so loose i could easily jiggle the rotor back and forth with my hand

any of you guys done this yourself or had someone else do it? how did it go? it all seemed pretty straight forward to me, all the threads i read about it made it seem way more difficult then it really was.

the only advice i can give is to jack up both sides of the car. i only lifted the side that i was going to be working on and when i went to take off the sway bar end link there was so much pressure on the sway bar from the other wheel being on the ground that i ended up popping off one of the ball joints in the link. it was an easy fix tho, i just used a carpenters clamp to press the ball back into the joint.

 

ok...guess not

 

Ive done more than a handful of bearings but just never on a mini yet. Did you have to replace the hub too? These look pretty identical to the 4 12pt bolt on bearings Audi uses. Everytime I go to press off the bearing from the hub the inner race seperates and remains on the hub..but nothing an air hammer with a chisel bit cant pop off.

Its funny how a bad bearing can sound and feel like a jumbo jet speeding up and slowing down as you accelerate or slow in your car.

 

Did you really take off the whole steering knuckle to replace the hub? It can easily be done without removing that...

 

Yes, I did a front wheel bearing on my old R53 without removing the steering knuckle. That must have really created a TON of work for your self.

 

im sure its just as easy with it still on the strut but its just one more bolt to take the whole spindle off and i was doing this at the same time i installed my coils so it made more sense

 

yes erik
the hub is part of the bearing