Wheel bearing job from hell.....

[Crowz]

Well I managed to change the wheel bearing on my 2005 bmw x5 3.0.

I'm sitting with bruises from head to toe and semi conscious. Not responsible for spell errors. Heck not responsible for complete thoughts.

I have changed a few hundred wheel bearings in my day. At least 100 cv axles.

I have NEVER been through the hell I went thru today in all of those jobs.

I watched this cool video showing how easy it was to change the front wheel bearing. For the most part the guys video was dead on with minor changes since he was doing the job on a x3 and mines an x5. Generally it covered each step nicely.

I should of just quit after taking the wheel off the car. Really. The axle nut was crushed onto the axle. Sure they are supposed to be dinged to keep them from coming off on two spots. But some moron had CRUSH the entire thing in with god knows what.

After 30 minutes of battling with that and finally DRILLING holes in the nut to flare it out enough I had the front tire off. YEAH!

Should of stopped there.....

Next I went to tap the cv axle out some like the guy in the video did with a tiny hammer and then even used a screw driver to finish knocking it thru. LOL not my x5. I made it up to 10 lb sledge hammer and still didn't seem to move it much. Maybe 1/4 of an inch. Maybe.

So I decide to skip that for now and took everything else off. EVERY one of the control arms, steering linkage etc was in there like no tomorrow. After beating the snot out of the stuff I finally had everything undone linkage wise. Even kept from damaging the wheel sensor and the leveling sensor for the headlights. I was feeling kind of proud of that since I read where so many had the sensor break off and the auto leveling sensor being fragile too.

Then I returned to the cv axle from hell. I beat this thing for 4 hours straight. I kept at it since it was moving verrry slowly. I had moved it a full inch and 1/2 now. Major progress or so I thought.

Eventually I realized the axle wasn't actually moving. I had mushroomed the entire axle 1 and 1/2 inches worth

I decided since the thing wouldn't come out I would introduce the bastard to my new 20 ton press I bought Saturday. I was sure they would be goooood friends.

So I proceed to remove the axle shaft from the chunk side. This wasn't that hard the heart attack part was when it snapped free like it should and then kept coming out of the chunk and coming out and coming out.

I didn't know it had a few feet of shaft to it and at this point I figured with how my day had gone I had just messed up my front end and was pulling out the carrier shaft along with the cv shaft from the other side of the car....

After going inside and double checking what the thing was supposed to look like and deciding it wasn't destroyed I took the entire steering knuckle and several feet of cv shaft over to my press. Trust me trying to feed all of the cv shaft thru the base of the press while holding the steering knuckle over your head is not fun or easy.

I finally got it in there and proceeded to press the thing out. I shattered the first impact socket I tried to use as a peg to push the axle shaft out. Then crushed two more solid metal spacers I had. After mangling a hand full of gear it finally let go with a horrible screeching sound and pop. I'm thinking YES its over finally. Nope it just moved 2 mm tops. This process had to be repeated about 20 times before I finally got the axle out of the hub.

That's when I realized how bad it was mushroom from the hammering.

So I called autozone and ordered a new axle which will be in tomorrow morning.

The funny part is the inside of the hub and the axle were spotless. Not one bit of rust or corrosion so no clue why it was in there so bad.

Next onto the flange the wheel bolts onto. Of course this came off with half the bearing seized to it. But I'm ready for this part. I had run into this on my other bmw's. I go to get the bearing splitter. Turns out a friend borrowed it and didn't bring it back. So I have to wait 3 hours on that to get back to me.

So I turn to the wheel bearing swap itself. That part actually went semi smoothly with the new press.

Then when the bearing separator finally made it back to me I removed the piece off the hub and pressed it into the wheel bearing. I wish I had a video of the wife trying holding the bearing separator rig while I turned the bolt with the ratchet.

So now I have a shiny new wheel bearing installed in the hub sitting beside my X5. When the axle gets in tomorrow at autozone I MAYBE will get it all put back together but at the rate my luck is going Im not counting on it...


Anyone else been thru this much just the change the a wheel bearing on their X5? Is this what its going to be like from now on????