Technical Fitting front wheel bearings at home

[schumraid]

Has anyone fitted front wheel bearings to the hubs? Im going to order a press but I'm unsure as to how heavy of a press I need. I was initially looking at a 6 ton press but it has been suggested that I will need bigger.

Has anyone done this?

Cheers!

 

[Shadeyman]

After seeing your previous post in another thread and Davren's reply I decided to give a friend a call.

He works in a local garage and has changed hundreds of wheel bearings.

He said:
The 6 ton press your thinking of buying may not be able to press out old bearings that are corroded in so the old method of a large hammer and a brass bar is what he usually resorted to and is what he suggests you do too.

When it comes to installing the new bearings nearly all bearings have to be pressed in these days due to sensitive parts in them. A 6 ton press should be capable of pressing in the bearings of most makes of car with a little help from some emery paper.

His garage used an old 5 ton press very successfully for 8 years.

 

[schumraid]

thanks for that shadey!

I have new bearings and hubs so removal won't be a problem. The hubs were actually the problem but I didn't see much point in putting old bearings into new hubs on a car with 80k that I plan to keep for a while

I had phoned my local fiat stealer for info which they couldn't supply but they would be more than happy to take £160 of me for the pleasure of fitting them

Had also phoned my usual mechanic but he has a 50 ton press so couldn't give me any info.

Anyway, I'll go ahead with the 6 ton and hope it is capable, thanks for the info!

 

[schumraid]

So I got my press today, gave it a blast:

Pushed that bad boy in no problem Looking forward to doing my suspension bushes now too. I just need to wait for my 36mm socket bit to arrive tomorrow and then I can get cracking.

Does anyone know the torque setting for the hub nut on the 1.6 3 door? Wheel nut torque would be helpful too!

:Offtopic:

How's this for safety first

Johnny

 

[schumraid]

I'm trying to find the front hub tightening torque as I don't wanna mess up nearly £200 of new bearings and hubs

Elearn lists front hub with bearings, M24 nut which makes sense, but tightening torque is only 7 daNm + 62 degress, which doesn't seem like a lot compared to the 25daNm for the back.

Does that sound about right?

 

[schumraid]

In the words of anyone who had done two minutes of research before attempting this, DON'T PRESS THE BEARING STRAIGHT ON!

I got this sorted today but had to borrow an impact wrench and compressor to get the hub nut off after wrecking my breaker bar trying to do it. This was a million times more difficult than I had anticipated/ than the rear bearings.

So to answer the question that was asked here in threads long ago of how hard is it to change a front bearing? It's a pain in the derrière, take it to a mechanic and pay them an hours labour unless you have all of the tools lying about!