How to replace front wheel bearing in a '92 Toyota corolla?

Answer 1

If you need a step-by-step description get the genuine Toyota service manual for the car. The cheapest source for such manuals is eBay or a used book supplier such as abebooks.com. (Get the real Toyota manual as opposed to an third party book such as Chiltons.) Also consult the illustrated service manuals on the autozone site.

Generally speaking you jack the car up on a jackstand, remove the wheel. Detach the brake assembly. (For convenience, the brake line is left connected and after the assembly is lose, you hang the assembly out of the way by using bailing wire to attach it to the coil spring.) Remove the rotor. Remove the end of the tie rod. (Use a special tool for this sold in auto parts stores.) Then remove the whole wheel assembly by removing the two bolts that attach it to the struts (These are hard, you will need a breaker bar and a piece of pipe to extend it.) Remove the axe nut and tap out the CV joint. Remove all of the other bolts on the bottom of the assembly that hold the lower ball joint to the suspension. (Here is a good opportunity to check that the ball joint hasn't frozen.) Much of the wheel assembly can be taken apart with hand tools. But changing the wheel bearing involves some pressing operations. You have to do some pressing to remove the shaft. It is difficult, but possible to do this by hand with a vise and gear pullers. The only good pullers I have found for this job are the bar type of pullers and the only bar type puller commonly sold is the expensive one by Snap-on. The typical pullers sold in auto parts stores that have a two or three pivoting arms, don't fit in this particular application. Once the shaft is pressed out, the wheel bearing comes apart easily and the only part of it left in the assembly is the outer race. I do not think you can press out the outer race with hand tools. So you will have to take this to an auto or machine shop to have it pressed out. The new bearing outer race will have to be pressed in. The most practical solution may be to disassemble things except for the pressing operations. Get the new bearing and take the assembly and new bearing to a machine shop and have them install it. (You may need to bum a ride since your car is still on the jackstand! ) Shops like Pep Boys can do this work but you can tell that not all their mechanics are experienced in pressing operations. So I recommend that you take it to a genuine machine shop. Take them the service manual too, since it does matter from which direction you do the pressing operations.

The typical situation on this model car is that the rubber boots on the outer CV joints crack or in changing the CV joints people are careless and get dirt into the wheel bearing. The dirt eats up the plastic spacers that separate the ball bearings. This causes the a low pitched noise that sounds like a soft rubbing or scraping as the wheel turns. Eventually the ball bearings wear out and you get a much louder noise.

AnswerWhen you remove the bolts that hold the struts to the wheel assembly, turn the nuts lose and then tap out the bolts. It is very difficult to remove these by turning the head of the bolt instead of the nut.

I just successfully removed the inner bearing race off a 1990 Corolla hub using a 2 ton gear puller from autozone. This race has an extremely narrow ridge on the race that I was able to grab using the pozi lock pullers (OEM number 27107) that keeps the jaws pushed against the ridge of the race while in the extraction process. I had to jury rig something for the hole in the hub. I used a small nut and the flat side of a horseshoe to bridge the hole (Anything similar would probably work). Note that anytime using a puller that you have to tighten the puller as tight as you can with your fingers then using a hammer rap sharply the shaft of the puller one time to help dislodge the race. Repeat this process until you can turn the handle without the rapping. As the race pulls off the hub, I used a large washer and a nut to take up the space between the side of the horseshoe and the hub to get the race fully off. Total time invested about 10 minutes plus run time to autozone to get the tool.