Wheel bearing DIY? Or any advice

[carlgo]

Originally Posted by Oil Burner

It's a like an old WW2 Bomber drone.Sort of a dull Wah Wah Wah sound.I initialy suspected tyre noise as i run a fairly aggresive off road pattern tyre (I have a house in darkest Shropshire UK) and do have to tackle farm tracks,flooding and generally bad road conditions.But it's not the tyres.The main givaway is driving around a corner at around 30MPH/50 odd KPH.You can hear the note change as you load/unload the bearings.It's only my left front,but am replacing both.

There is no movement at the wheel (Top/Bottom) on a ramp,and suprisingly very very little noise whilst spinning the wheel.Apparently mine is only in the early stages.

I have this, with non-aggressive tires no less. The dealer said tire noise, a road test done by their senior guy who I actually know. But, I don't think he took it out of town, so in-town noise might drown out the sound I hear.

It has been like this since I bought it, nearly 20K miles ago and the sound has not changed a bit. Usually, bearings get worse in a hurry, but maybe BMW is different?

Same exact symptoms as yours, no noise spinning, different tone on turns and pretty much the same on different road surfaces. That kind of pins it down for me.

So, please keep us up to date when you get the new bearings. I really am anxious to hear (or not) your results.

[JCL]

For what it is worth, my 2003 X5 3.0 experienced a failed wheel bearing at approximately 50,000 km (from memory). It was just within the warranty period. It had been parked at the airport for 6 days, and was totally quiet up to that point. Driving out of the airport, I heard what I would describe as a "ruh, ruh, ruh" noise, which I think is very similar to what Oil Burner described. It was a very typical wheel bearing noise, and varied with road speed and not engine speed. It didn't vary with road surface, didn't vary with turns, and was loud enough that I wondered about my chances of making it 80 km to my home. I stopped at my dealer (with no appointment) on the way home, described the problem, and suggested it was probably the LF. A tech drove it, returned in 3 minutes, and confirmed my self-diagnosis. They took it in immediately, and it was ready the next day. Loaner car and all. Great service. Anyway, the way mine failed (and they are known to fail...) it wouldn't have gone for 20,000 miles or kilometers.

[pinksoviet]

Okay, disregarding my earlier post in this thread, I do believe I found another DIY for replacing the wheel bearings. Now mind you, this is for the rear wheel bearings on a E34, but I reasoned (whether for the better or for the worse, I do not yet know) that since the rear wheels are the powered ones, and the X5's have powered front wheels (as well as rears), it would be comparable.

BMW E34 Rear Wheel Bearing

Now the process overall seems rather straightforward, but the only concern is the axle removal stated in the aforementioned DIY. How would one feasibly accomplish that (without having to consult the CV Boot Replacement DIY, which would entail removing many, many things)?

(Edit: Unless you can somehow push the output shaft out of the hub area, as a member mentioned previously? Is this possible?)

[Weasel]

I press the axle shaft out of the hub with my big air hammer when changing the boot or bearing. It isn't a bad job as long as you have all the needed tools and onfo, it is doable at home.

Does the bently manual not give bearings writeup?

[pinksoviet]

Erm, I'm looking at the TIS and it's pretty much what the E34 DIY stated minus the axle removal because the TIS assumes you use a special BMW press that, I believe, does not necessitate the removal of the shaft (I suppose it curves around it?). The presses that DaveMires used (1st page of this thread near the end) have a circular disc which would require the removal of the shaft. He (DaveMires) also said that he knocked the shaft/CV stub off of the wheel hub using the slide hammer.

So it is confirmed that you CAN "push" the splined CV stub out of the wheel hub (just out of curiosity, why is this?) (Edit: This is assuming that the wheel hub is in its original fitted location and that the CV stub is being pushed BACK into the car).

Sorry for the many questions.



EDIT:



I finally understood what DaveMires meant by "if you can do a CV boot replacement, then you can do this" (though I suppose it's odd that such a simple sentence would elude me for so long). I'm assuming that one merely has to follow the CV Boot Replacement DIY up until you start messing with the CV boot itself (unless you also have to replace the CV boot, then go right on ahead!)

I.E., take off the brake calipers, rotors, hub, control arms, steering tie rod, and swivel bearing in the manner prescribed in the aforementioned DIY.

The wheel bearing itself is in the swivel bearing, and you would use the bearing press kit to remove the old wheel bearing and press in the new wheel bearing as shown in the E34 Rear Wheel Bearing Replacement DIY linked in a previous post in this thread (or whichever way instructed by the bearing press kit that you use. You could use a hydraulic press also if you wanted to, I suppose). Oh, and a small note is that the TIS instructs the user to apply red Loctite to at least 50% of the length of the hole that the new wheel bearing is to be pressed into.

Now, the E34 DIY states that there is a possibility of the bearing actually becoming separated when you remove the hub (effectively destroying the bearing itself, but it isn't as if that matters), presenting a situation where the inner race of the wheel bearing is firmly attached to the hub and the rest of the wheel bearing is stuck in the swivel bearing. The method of extracting the wheel bearing from the swivel bearing would not change, and in fact nothing would really change if you were to use an entirely new hub (I'm led to believe that using an entirely new hub is recommended). But if you somehow wanted to reuse the old hub, you would have to somehow cut the inner race of the wheel bearing off of the wheel hub (as shown in the E34 DIY article).

Then reassemble everything back according to the CV Boot Replacement DIY.

Now, I don't exactly plan on trying this, as my wheel bearings are quite fine, so I won't be able to test this out. But I am fairly sure that this is the proper course of action in replacing wheel bearings.

Hopefully this sheds some light onto the process.

[DaveMires]

hey guys sorry for the lack of information and pics on my wheel bearing replacement...I have been on the road with work for the last few months. I will work on a pictorial this week for everyone.

[TriX5]

Any one know where this DIY might be saved?

I have a feeling at least one of the wheelbearings on my 4.8iS is bad. Once I go in to swap the tension strut bushings I want to do the bearings and CV boots in one fell swoop.

[pinksoviet]

Oh wow, I forgot all about this one. Um, I'm not sure if there was any DIY made, but I can offer some tips gained from replacing the front axle.

1. Assuming you can get the axle out of the hub (which you will have to do anyways if you want to replace the outer CV axle boot)...

2. You will have to remove the hub from the swivel bearing. You can check out this video to see how this particular person does it using a bearing splitter and the wheel lug nuts. Theoretically you could do it with a slide hammer attached to a bearing puller, but when I rented a bearing puller it turned out that the hub diameter on the X5 was too large for the bearing puller to attach. So make sure of that before you decide to do the slide hammer method.

Wheel Bearing Removal with Harbor Freight Universal Front Bearing Tool BMW 325i Rear - YouTube

3. Then you would use the bearing press from Harbor Freight to remove the wheel bearing and reinstall it.

Sorry I can't say much more, but I haven't done this job myself. It seems relatively simple once you have the tools, however. Though now that you mention it, I will probably be having to replace my front wheel bearings as well because I'm getting that characteristic noise.

[carlgo]

For what it is worth, my WB noise hasn't gotten any worse or different in many thousands of miles, many long trips.

One bearing had been replaced some time ago under warranty because one of the techs thought it was loud after I persisted a bit in reporting it. In retrospect, it probably wasn't bad.

My 05 3.0 just transmits in a lot of road noise, or the econo Michelins are surprisingly loud. It is the only thing about the vehicle that bothers me, really quite annoying to have it sound like something is failing. It only goes away at higher speeds when the overall sound levels drown it out. At modest speeds it is bad. It would be interesting to try different tires, but these are lasting forever.

[TriX5]

Thanks guys, I saw that kit at HBF and it looks quite useful. Probably a job for the Thxgiving weekend :-)