Front Wheel Bearing - Tightening/Replacement

[Matt B]

great post mate, nice work. Unfortunately I can see only one of your photos. the last one, hub on ground.

Am I the only one or is everyone else having the same problem?

cheers

Sorry about that. I've got them hosted on Google Photos so there may be some access issues there.

I'll give it another crack and see how it goes.

[Matt B]

Images all moved to another hosting site and resized. So all should be good now.

If they're still too big let me know and I can reduce further.

[General Disturbance]

Awesome M8 can see them all now. Thanks

[NJV6]

Here is the rear wheel bearing write up

https://www2.pajeroclub.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=55680

To get those 4 nuts undone I put the socket in the vice and it made it easy as shown about half way down the thread.

[erad]

Excellent coverage of the work. I look forward to seeing the end result as well

[GHendo]

It might be advisable to get the bottom ball joint popped before reassembling – ie. so you can bolt it back on with the three bolts BEFORE reinstalling the knuckle. I seem to remember when I did this job last time, I did what you did and unbolted the ball joint, then had difficulty reassembling with it still attached to the knuckle – I think I ended up popping it out.

Cheers

Geoff

[Matt B]

Day two of the bearing change and I'm happy to announce that it seems to be all done.

Having access to a decent vice made things a bit easier, although due to the weird shape of the assembly, getting it to fit in the vice was challenging.


Once the four bolts were loosened I kept them threaded in and gave them some whacks with a big hammer to persuade the bearing assembly to come out. That, combined with Freeze and Release - or any other penetrant of your choice - should do it, just being sure to bash it out evenly so the bearing assembly doesn't bind in the knuckle.


At some stage, if the bearing doesn't magically pop out, you'll run out of bolt to bash through. Then you'll need something to impact onto the outer race of the bearing to continue the good work. I used a 55mm socket for this and it worked well


Finally the knuckle released its hold on the bearing and the thing came away easily.


Before reassembly I attacked the inner surface of the knuckle with emery paper to remove the 15 years of crap built up in there. I tested the cleanliness of the surface by making sure the new bearing could easily be inserted and removed.


Here's the old bearing with the new one ready for reassembly.


The new bearing was sourced from Repco and cost $207 with a club discount. Part no. is shown in the below picture:


Before reassembly, in order to look after the next person to change the bearing - most likely future me - I covered the outer surface with anti-seize:


From there the new bearing slipped straight into the knuckle and was torqued up. Note that the bearing needs to be correctly oriented as per the unevenly spaced bolt holes as can be seen here:


From there the whole thing is ready to put back in the car.

As an extra job I took the opportunity to do up the lower ball joint - much rather than try to do it on the car. This was more important considering the damage the thread suffered during my unsuccessful attempts to separate it. That's where I hit a snag, as it's very difficult to find a M16 x 1.5 castle nut, or tap on a Sunday. Short of waiting until tomorrow to get a new castle nut I looked at alternatives. I discovered that a 5/8 UNF is pretty darn close, if not spot on. As I had both a tap and die to suit that, I resurrected the thread on both the nut and bolt, and the lower ball joint was torqued up with no hassles. I took into account Geoff's advice above about separating the ball joint before reassembly, but decided I'd give it a crack with the ball joint together as enough damage had been done already trying to separate it and I didn't want to run the risk of doing more.

Heading back to the car, assembly was pretty straightforward. Initially I slid the bearing onto the driveshaft, and the lower ball joint into the lower control arm. The control arm was lowered so the upper ball joint was clear of the upper control arm. While everything was free of tension and easy to move, I inserted the three bolts into the lower control arm, as well as put the nut on the drive shaft. Using a jack, the lower control arm was pushed up until the upper ball joint could be engaged and the nut put on. From there the upper and lower bolts were torqued up, and split pins inserted as appropriate. As the jacking point is under one of the bolts on the lower control arm, I moved the jack outboard a bit while I did the inboard bolt, then placed it back in the original position when I torqued up the outer two bolts. Although the car was on stands, I still used the jack to lift the control arm to relieve tension on the system while tightening. I didn't bother connecting the tie rod yet to allow ease of movement of the knuckle.

A couple of points of note so far. It's a good idea to reattach the brake disc guard before refitting the knuckle to the car. Also when putting the nut on the driveshaft, ensure the washer is fitted with the correct orientation - with the chamfer outer most.


From there reassemble the brakes, first refit the brake disc, and then the calliper carrier - don't do what I did and start to put the carrier on before the disc. My method for putting the carrier on was to place the bolts in each hole on the knuckle, making sure they also went through the disc guard. I then screwed the bottom bolt loosely into the carrier, and manipulated the carrier until the top bolt went in. From there torque the bolts up and you're set.


At this point I gave the disc a spin to make sure it wasn't rubbing on anything, especially the guard which coped a bit of abuse during the whole process.

Before refitting the callipers with new pads, the pistons needed to be pushed back in, after removing the cap from the fluid reservoir. As the callipers are twin piston, pushing one down means the other comes up. To fix this I used the old pad to push the two pistons down together:


The callipers were refitted, remembering to put the larger bolt to the top, and both with a healthy amount of anti seize on the slide.

The tie rod was then secured onto the knuckle and I found that as things tightened up, the bolt started to rotate with the nut. To fix this I used a combination of gravity, a jack, and the taper of the tie rod end. I placed the jack under the tie rod end and increased the load on the end until the bolt no longer rotated. The nut was torqued up and split pin replaced.


Once everything was all back in place, I got someone to stand on the brake while I did up the hub nut to 250Nm. The split pin and cover was replaced, and the wheel fitted.

I haven't had a chance to road test the car yet as I'm still to do the brake pads on the other side, but the play in the wheel has gone, and everything rotates as it should.

Some points of note about the job:
- Although I don't doubt it's possible to do the job without removing the knuckle - as some have noted here, as well as the workshop manual - my preference would be to remove the lot and do it in a vice. The inability to put a socket on the hub mounting bolts will make torquing it up near impossible. Also the limited room and the brute force required to remove the bearing from the knuckle would make things extremely difficult.
- If the lower ball joint won't separate, it is possible to remove the three bolts from the lower control arm instead. I think for future jobs this will be my preference to avoid damaging the lower ball joint.
- Replacement hub assembly is available from Repco for just over $200 - Part No. RWH5090
- Anything which moves or will need to be separated in the future could do with a coat of antiseize
- All threads were Loctited and torqued as per manual specifications
- All up I would think the job could be completed in 2-3 hours - the unknown being the effort required to remove the bearing from the knuckle. I think it took me an hour using a big vice, hammer, and penetrant. Other methods could be a press, heat, and possibly a puller if you could get it to grip

I hope the above makes sense, and helps anyone wanting to attempt it in the future. It was certainly made easier through having access to a suite of suitable tools.

If anyone's got any questions, please let me know and I'll fill the gaps where I can.

Matt

[erad]

Excellent writeup. One thing I would recommend you do is to open the bleed valve on the brake caliper and then press the pistons back into it. This way, you dump the old brake fluid in the caliper. This can easily be contaminated with water, thereby drastically reducing the boiling point of the fluid which can cause the brake pedal to go to the floor under heavy braking. It also can accelerate corrosion in the wheel cylinder, so it is best tho get rid of the old fluid when you are replacing the brake pads. This, and the master cylinder care the places where moisture can contaminate the brake fluid and this is why Mitsubishi recommend replacing the brake fluid every 2 years. By dumping the fluid in the wheel cylinders, you have to replace it in the master cylinder and this all helps to keep moisture out of the system.

[Matt B]

Excellent writeup. One thing I would recommend you do is to open the bleed valve on the brake caliper and then press the pistons back into it. This way, you dump the old brake fluid in the caliper. This can easily be contaminated with water, thereby drastically reducing the boiling point of the fluid which can cause the brake pedal to go to the floor under heavy braking. It also can accelerate corrosion in the wheel cylinder, so it is best tho get rid of the old fluid when you are replacing the brake pads. This, and the master cylinder care the places where moisture can contaminate the brake fluid and this is why Mitsubishi recommend replacing the brake fluid every 2 years. By dumping the fluid in the wheel cylinders, you have to replace it in the master cylinder and this all helps to keep moisture out of the system.

Thanks erad, that's a very valid point and I couldn't agree more. Personally I'm reluctant to open up a bleed without the system under positive pressure, and pushing the pistons back in while manipulating the bleed needs an extra hand or two.

My preference is to push clean fluid through from the reservoir, which I'll be doing once I do the brake brake on the other side - the rears being done a month ago. I use a syringe to near empty the reservoir and then push it through to each of the individual callipers, bleeding them until the new fluid comes through. That way the entire system gets a good flush.

[basil]

Just my two bob's worth, but I highly recommend to just undo the three bolts and remove the whole ball joint as an assembly as these can be little buggers to get apart, and damage to threads is highly likely.
My bearings took nearly 40 tonnes of pressure in the press to release from the hub, and when they did, went off like a bomb as they flew apart. Everyone here in the workshop jumped with the noise.
The new bearings just fell into position.

Cheers,

[am760]

My 2c.... Just doing a wheel hub replacement on my NM pajero atm!

My piece of advice if your finding it difficult to access the 4 bolts that hold the wheel hub in, is to gently tap on the driveshaft. This pushes it in enough so the spikes aren't touching the spanner, then you can put the ring part of the spanner over the bolts!

Drivers side wheelhub came out without removing anything else.....passenger side..... not so!

So thanks for your write up!!

[Matt B]

My 2c.... Just doing a wheel hub replacement on my NM pajero atm!

My piece of advice if your finding it difficult to access the 4 bolts that hold the wheel hub in, is to gently tap on the driveshaft. This pushes it in enough so the spikes aren't touching the spanner, then you can put the ring part of the spanner over the bolts!

Drivers side wheelhub came out without removing anything else.....passenger side..... not so!

So thanks for your write up!!

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't through of slipping it out a bit for better access.

I might try it next time.

[Lazarus78]

I just changed the front passenger bearing today. All the tools I had were the appropriate sockets, a small cold chisel, a brass hammer and a 4lb sledge hammer. I also had a trolley jack and two stands.

I undid the drive shaft and tapped it back with the brass hammer until it was loose, then removed the top ball joint from the control arm and managed to swing the whole knuckle out far enough to get the axle out of the bearing allowing me to undo the bolts with a socket.

I had the disc, tin guard and ABS sensor (along with its little tin guard) removed to keep it out of harms way and the ball joint bolted back on with help from the trolley jack to lift it back up. Then I used a combination of WD40, cursing and the sledge hammer to open a crack up behind the bearing by bashing the back of the wheel studs on either side until the gap was big enough for me to spray more WD40 in and hammer the cold chisel down in between to widen the gap more.

Some more finessing with the sledge hammer on alternate sides worked it out far enough until it just dropped out. The whole lot was covered in WD40 by then so I gave it a good wipe out and coating of nickel based anti-seize and then everything just went back together easy.

Took me about 3 hours all up. I'll do the drivers side next weekend just in case I have to leave it soak in WD40 for longer if it's tighter.

[warezwally]

I just remembered I kept a note of “Silicon’s” post at ...

https://www2.pajeroclub.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=54201

In it he said, and I quote …

“I managed to get the sucker out with brute force of another sort. I purchased 2 bolts 90mm long ($15 for rip off metric fine thread) and screwed them into the hub from behind just like the original bolts. I then used my air chisel with a point tip on it and pushed the tool against the bolt heads and pulled the trigger. It worked a charm and it slowly worked the unit out.”


Geoff

I just did this the same way and was very easy, completely removed hub/knuckle but if you remove the cv you should be able to do it fairly easily in situ.



For the record I used cheap bunnings ryobi airwave air hammer it was like $40 and I used 4 bolts but 2 would probably suffice, probably took a half hour to work its way out.