ok so i recently failed my out of province inspection due to one key part.. my L.R wheel bearing was shot. (2004 evolution GSR)
Naturally wanting to save myself a little bit of cash from shop labour and inflated pricing.. i went my own way, and took it upon myself to fix it... not a rocket science procedure, but had it "quirks"... that being said.. i noticed very few threads on just a basic DIY on this job.. so i'll post what ...I... did. may not be to exact book procedure.. but the end result for me was more then disireable. so here's how i approached it...

first off.. i called around "ALOT" to find the best prices in my location.. dealership wanted 255 big ones for just the wheel bearing/hub assembly... wow.. haha my end result was going with NAPA .. may not have been the complete assembly.. but they had a non OEM bearing set for the evo and at a decent price.. paid 140$ for the bearings. (SKF part # GRW176) unfortunatly i forgot to take a pic lol but its simply the bearing assembly with no hub

ok so i choose to clear my afternoon one boring day, and get started on er.. not knowing what possibilties i'd have of fitment issues, siezed stuff, etc... i gave my self a good full afternoon for this.

i drove to my buddies garage (its winter... not a big fan of working in the snow haha) and the afternoon went as follows....

1 - should be obvious... chock all your wheels, loosen the lugs on the respective wheel at fault, and jack er up.. doesnt need to be high, just enough to clear the ground.. and remove the tire.

2 - loosen off the 2 bolts behind your caliper, dont be afraid to get dirty.. your gonna :P .. remove the caliper off the rotor (mine was pretty easy.. just a couple good thumps with my palm and she loosed right off) !! don't hang the caliper as is!! do yourself and your car a favor and "hang" it up.. i tied mine to my spring out of the way. Also not sure if it was necessary, but i also loosened off the bottom bolt on my shock, to give myself a few extra inches to play with...

3 - now with that cleared and outa the way.. i good couple solid whacks with the hammer on each side of the rotor, should loosen er right up and able to pull off (don't forget.... that rotor most likely wont come off for you if you still have the E-brake engaged.. it'll just kinda "spring back" when you yank on it... dissengage the e-brake for a sec and dollars to doughnuts she'll fall right off)

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4 - now for that center nut with the cotter pin... pretty straight forward... bend the cotter pin straight, and pull it out. loosen off the nut (didnt take much for me, was still pretty nicely greased however) you may want a NEW cotter pin for re-assembly.

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5 - now for a little more fun... you wanna reach behind the whole setup and loosen out the four (4) bolts behind your whole hub assembly.. some areas may be a little "fun" for better lack of a word to get at.. but it's certainly not impossible. un-do those and take em out.

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6 - ok so now we have the bolts out... time to get that assembly outa there.. to be perfectly honest.. this gave me a little bit of trouble.. she was tight! what i eneded up doing was crawling under the car on my dolly.... gettin a nice curved prybar... lining up behind the hub where the rotor "sheild" was not in the way and pounded the crap out of it!! every now and then id go back to the front, and pound it back in place.. just to try and loosen stuff up, and not bind and that angle.. eventually with some patiance and careful placement under the car with that prybar and a punch.. i managed to pound it into submission and it eventually came loose.

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7 - ok so the above step left me with one fairly substancial problem.... lol in removing the hub in such a fashion... the hub actaully came out while the bearing stayed behind... leaving only the sleeve still attached to my hub.... now there in lies my problem haha while i have a press.. for pressing the bearing and hub together... i did have something to actually PULL the sleeve off... trust me its on there good!!! so this is where i more or less branched off from normal... we mcgivered the next step(s) on the fly... heres what we did

we set up the hub in a vice.. nice and straight up and down... then VERY VERY carefully used a cut off disc to groove a line on each side of the sleeve we were trying to remove... with as much material as we could remove.. we then took the propane torch to er.. see if maybe we could heat it up enough to expand the sleeve and slip off.. to no avail. so we decided to bring out the BIG guns hehehe... i loaded up the carbide deburring bit.. and again VERY EXTREMELY carefully cut a "canal" all the way down the sleeve... got that part VERY thin... heated it back up for a few seconds... then grabbed a nice size chissle and a big hammer.. and with one SOLID hit cracked the sleeve ALLLL the way down the line
she came off with a couple taps after that... this may have been the wrong approach to the whole situation.. but our extreme attention to detail and deligence paid off... not a single mark to speak of on the hub.. job very well done

heres a couple pics of that little operation....

 

next page....

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ok so with that takin care of... nicely imo.. now we had to get those bearing out.... to do this i crawled in from the back again.. and paitiantly.. with hole punch thru back bolt holes.. carefully starting hammering the back out. corner by corner she slowly creeped forward, and poped out for me.. not overly hard.. just be precise, and patiant!! it'll come!

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9 - now with everything out where it should be.. it's time to put that press to work... CAREFULLY line up the hub and bearings together. you dont want to be a couple degrees off here.. concentration is key... and just slowly and surely start crankin that press down, locking the two pieces together simple as that! ... and that is completed.... back up thru all the steps to reinstall everything... use lock tight! and torque to the correct specs.. i forget at the moment what my torque was. everything should bolt up with more or less ease. throw the wheel back on.. zip all the lugs up, lower the car, and torque! complete! ... as i said... may not have been by the book per say... but it turned out excellent! i'm very happy with it. just be careful and take your time! no rush!

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some more various pics to get a better idea?

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hub AND bearings out.. just cv shaft
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heating and grinding
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fireworks!
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STM sells oem rear wheel hub assemblies for $170, probably free shipping or $5 at most.

http://www.streettunedmotorsports.co...el_bearing.htm

I haven't checked mitsubishiparts.net yet, but I'm guessing it'll be close to STM's price as well.

 

unfortunatly... as good as that is.. they only give me 10 days to repair the "fail" to be able to sign off on the inspection.. if it's over ten days.. i need to do it allll over again, start the inspection from square one.. thats another 250 out of my pocket.. so i couldnt exacktly order it in haha otherwise i certainly would have. that was the exact kit i was looking at as well, but thanks to time constraints... i went with quick.

 

couple things:

Never reuse cotter pins. You can get a kit of them for $6 and I've been on the same kit for years.

Rotors usually have tapped holes in them. That is to screw a bolt in to pop the rotor off.

lastly, for when the sleeve of bearing gets stuck on hub get a bearing seperator and or puller. You can rent them for free and most auto parts places if you don't want to just buy it for about $40. It would have taken you less than a minute to get it off that way with no risk of damage.

 

thx

 

Bump.

About getting the hub of the car. Would it be ok to to use a gear puller on the hub with the opposing force on the axle? Or would the force possibly cause damage?

 

I would think that should be fine since there is a dimple on the center of the axle for that purpose...

 

I used img code so the pictures are able to be seen in the post. It helps my mind put together the steps when reading your post. Good job pulling apart the hub assembly. I might do something similar to this in the future. Thanks for posting!

 

Hi there,
I'm about to do the same on mine. Thanks for your post, good stuff!

 

I bought the whole hub assembly, I got all the 14mm bolts off the rear of the knuckle, but it still won't come off???

Any suggestions?

 

Just to make sure we're clear, you've undone all 4 bolts?

If so, then yes that sucker is stuck in there tight. I attached a 3 arm gear puller to the hub and put the opposing force on the axle. Worked great.

 

Yeah I ended up going to Pepboys and getting the bearing puller tool.....seperated the bearing 1st (Unintentionally) then reatached it and seperated the assembly....this worked for me as I had bought the entire hub assembly to just bolt it back on... test drove the car and the scratching/scraping noise is now gone

I was really unconfortable with the idea of using the axle as opposing force but thats why i would suck at engineering lol

 

I wasn't too keen on applying force on the axle either but I didn't see any other way of getting it out. Good to hear your annoying noise is gone, unfortunately mine didn't and I had to send my diff away.