Had my car in to the muffler/brake place, they replaced the drivers side front wheel bearing. Parts, $60 (Timken), labor, $90. Not too bad it seems. Also got new front pads and rotors, rotors were warped. Now the car is nice and quiet and stops smoothly too!
$150 is a fantastic deal and I would take that in a second. I was quoted $330 at a local shop and $400 at the dealer. You may also have saved a little bit by combining labor with the brake job too.
I just did my driver's side on this weekend and it went really well overall.
I did the free loan-a-tool program at Canadian Tire and got:
Part 25-6149 Slide Hammer Puller set $119.99
Part 25-6319 FWD Bearing rem/ins kit $199.99
as well as a 30mm-36mm axle nut socket set (only 6 point, used to drive bearing kit)
I also had to buy the axle nut socket, Princess auto had this for $5.
I found the job itself to be very straightforward following Scurvy's guide. 10 good whacks with the slide hammer and the bearing was ripped out using the old axle nut on the back side. To take the inner race off the hub assembly, I bought
this kit, but it wasn't quite big enough to fit, so I had to remove the 2 bottom tightening bolts and fit a clamp over the whole assembly to keep it on. I didn't have any hardened washers larger than the inside of the hub but smaller than the inner race but the axle nut again worked it's wonders. Here's how it worked:
The only snag I really came to was removing the circlip... I managed to completely bend my biggest snap ring pliers. They were pretty cheap ones and a quick trip to Lordco and $25 later, a pair that
looked the exact same did the job without fuss.
Retrospective thoughts on this is that you really have to make sure you mark the location of the ball joint bolts on the lower control arm well. I just circle them in pencil and thought it would be good enough, but they really didn't suffice when I was putting it back together. Thankfully, when taking apart I noticed they were all the way on one side making it pretty easy. I would almost recommend just hitting them with a bit of spray paint the night before to make sure you know 100%.
I was wondering about the bearing kit however... I didn't use one, just the bearing and got an axle nut to go with it. All the
pictures I find of this kit however have the axle nut as well as 3 other nuts... is this just a bad pic or should I have replace 3 other nuts as well? When I looked at everything I removed, there were no other self locking vinyl nuts other than the axle. Are the pics just wrong??
You'll see in the pic above that the bearing actually looks quite good... on that side. The inner side didn't look as good and felt like it was grinding a bit when I turned it without a load. When I put a bit of pressure on it and turned it that way, it actually felt a bit better. What I suppose must have been happening is that when I turned right, it unloaded the inner ring of bearings giving them some play and that's when I heard them. This only give more argument that you can't figure out which side it is with the left/right turn theory.
Anyways, a big thanks to scurvy for this guide and all the other helpful contributions!!