Front Wheel Bearing R&R

[Ricky Bobby]

my symptoms sound like it though right? let me know how your job goes, if you could post up a thread with pics that would probably be most helpful

Any thoughts on what I posted above, if its an easier job to do if you replace the whole bearing/hub assembly at once? is that possibly to just undo the hub and extract the assembly as one and reinstall as one assembly? does that make sense or am I confusing myself?


The only thing I'm thinking could be a problem would be worn subframe bushings, but you just replaced yours and I don't think the subframe bushings were causing you any vibrations or humming types of noises at speed were they?

[davintosh]

Originally Posted by Ricky Bobby

my symptoms sound like it though right? let me know how your job goes, if you could post up a thread with pics that would probably be most helpful

Any thoughts on what I posted above, if its an easier job to do if you replace the whole bearing/hub assembly at once? is that possibly to just undo the hub and extract the assembly as one and reinstall as one assembly? does that make sense or am I confusing myself?


The only thing I'm thinking could be a problem would be worn subframe bushings, but you just replaced yours and I don't think the subframe bushings were causing you any vibrations or humming types of noises at speed were they?

The symptoms you described a couple of posts back sure sound like wheel bearings. My subframe bushings were shot, and I really didn't notice the wheel bearing hum until after I replaced the bushings; no correlation there at all.

Replacing the whole hub assembly might be slightly easier, but only a little. The big chore in the front wheel bearing is getting the bearing out of the wheel carrier, and I don't think you want to replace that. Here's a YouTube video that shows how to remove bearings like those on the front of the X5. The video is on an e36 3-series, but the bearing & wheel carriers are similar. Also, with the e53 it may be easier to just remove the wheel carrier to get access to the back of the bearing to press it out rather than removing the axle as was done in the video on the e36. The wheel bearing press kit can usually be borrowed from an auto parts store too.