Wheel Bearing DIY
 

***Discalimer: If you are not comfortable or not able to complete this, please consult a mechanic. I am not a Professional Mechanic (I am a Regional Manager of a trucking company), there is no substitute for professional advice. Do this at your own risk.***

So you have been told that you have a bad wheel bearing. Some symptoms would include a feeling that you have mud tires on your car. A nice humming noise that only your radio turned up over ¾ of the way can drown out. It will eventually become so pronounced that you will even have vibration in the accelerator and steering wheel.

For all of the videos I’ve seen, the wheel bearing gently slides off after you loosen a couple of readily accessible bolts with the aid of car-lift and pneumatic tools. This tutorial is for the serious DIYer that wants to know how to do this. This tutorial will demonstrate how to remove a severely rusty caliper, bearing, etc… Yeah it’s from the midwest where we have Winter and lots and lots of salt on the road. Enjoy your luck if you are in SW or Pacific where rust is not a major issue.

This is the perfect time to upgrade your rotors, brakes, and even install the big brake kit you’ve been lusting over. This article is written from the perspective of re-using all the parts. Let’s imagine you just took a vacation, had a family wedding, wrecked your other car, and have all of your other monthly bills to pay, theoretically of course.

How to diagnose the problem:

Drive your G35 in a S at about 20-30 mph. As you turn from one direction you will put stress on either wheel bearing and you will hear more or less noise coming from one side. In my case, as I turned it hard to the right and my driver side wheel bearing made the whom-whom-whom noise.


Next buy your parts. I got mine from the stealership. Enough said on that subject.

You will need:
32mm Socket (preferrably a deepwell but I did it with a normal one) Sears for less than $9.
22mm Socket
14mm Socket
10mm Socket
Needle Noise Pliers
Channel Locks
3lb Hammer
WD40
PB Blaster- this stuff is worth its weight in Gold!
1- 8mm 1.25 x 50mm bolt from Home Depot- more on this bolt later
1 wire coat hanger or zip ties to hang caliper
Pipe to extend your leverage on ratchet
Axle stands and jack



Now let’s talk about the process:
1. Remove the Wheel and get ready to loosen the Shoe Bracket


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Remove the Cotter Pin.
With the car in the air have someone step on the brakes and remove the spindle nut.

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It’s not really touching although it looks like it in the picture. That’s a 4’ breaker bar that someone loaned me. I could do this easily with the 1-2’ piece of pipe mentioned later.

2. Remove Shoe. Make sure you took your steroids this morning!

There are two 22mm bolts on the backside. Spray them with PB Blaster. Here are some helpful hints. Put a breaker bar on the ratchet. Hammer the wrench or ratchet to loosen the bolt. Some have used the hydraulic jack to push up on the ratchet. I was successful with the breaker bar.

Here’s a pic of the bolts. There are two of them. I read that these are torqued down with 90-115 ft. lbs of torque.

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A leftover 1-2’ piece of ¾in pipe was the great equalizer on this project. The ¾ was a little tight but worked ok. Just don’t put it on so tight you’ll never get it off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Now remove the brake caliper. There are two bolts that must be removed. IIRC it is a 14mm socket.

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You should now have this: Note SUPPORT YOUR CALIPER!

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Now you will be asking yourself what is the bolt and ratchet?

There is a threaded hole on the rotor that you can feed a bolt into that will break the rotor loose from the Wheel Hub due to excessive rusting.
That bolt is: 8mm 1.25 x 50mm- it’s about 50 cents at Home Depot.

With just a few turns it will loosen the rotor up just for you.
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Here’s what’s behind the Rotor. Push the drive axle back to loosen it from the bearing teeth. This will prevent damage to the drive axle.

There are 4 Bolts that you must loosen up. Get Creative. Use your breaker bar. Turn the wheel from side to side. Use a universal adapter if necessary to get to these bolts.

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Next loosen the ABS sensor.
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Spray the front and back of the wheel bearing with PB Blaster
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Now Say Hello to my little Friend!
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Alternate blows on either side about 2-3 on either side of light-medium force.
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After you remove this. Go throw a small party and call all of your family and friends! The only event more significant in your life is being poddy trained.

Now that you have the old bearing out. Spray with

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Next scrape everything down with a brass or steel brush to remove surface rust. Now spray again. Even Better coat it down with Anti-Seize Compound.
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IMPORTANT: The bearing has to be oriented properly so that the opening in the back of it is lined up with the hole for the ABS Sensor. See the pics below. IF YOU DON’T DO THIS YOU MAY HAVE TO REMOVE THE NEW BEARING AND THIS CAN BE A PAIN OR DAMAGE IT.

Now insert the new bearing. I had to insert the bolts from behind. Attach the dust cover and then insert the bearing. I could not get the bearing to fit in. SO, I threaded the bolts to the bearing and tightened the bolts evenly. This caused the bearing to be drawn into the opening evenly. MAKE SURE THAT THE DRIVE AXLE AND HUB ARE LINED UP OR YOU COULD STRIP THREADS.

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Next, insert the ABS Sensor:
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After this is done. Reattach the Rotor. Watch the dust cover to make sure that it spins freely. If you bent the dust cover it will cause a tinny rubbing sound on the inside of the rotor when you drive it. So take a second to inspect here.

Reattach the brake assembly. Make sure you spray everything with brake cleaner. Put on the brake grease too. No sense putting squeaks into your brake system.

Attach the Rotor Lock Nut after the brakes are reattached. You can’t torque the Spindle Nut without brake pressure. DON’T FORGET THE COTTER PIN! I’m the voice of experience here. Taking it apart after you’re “done”, is cause to throw tools across the garage. Sure enough I needed the needle noise pliers next too.

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I’ve heard everything from 113-140 ft/lbs. Practically I could only torque to about 120 before the brakes would not hold the rotor.

Torque down the bearing bolts if you can reach them. If not use the equalizer and you should be able to get them very close to the correct torque of approx. 113 ft. lbs (so I’m told).

Re-attach the Wheel and torque the lug nuts to 80 ft. lbs.

Take it for a drive make sure there are no issues with the brakes, bearing noise, or grinding noise. If you hear a tinny noise, check the dust cover. That’s what happened to me. Trust me taking the wheel off the third time when I was “done” was enough to make me lose my religion.


Now that it is done, go sit in the corner and re-consider why there are so few how-to articles about this on the net. Next reconsider your driving approach and how you will avoid Pot Holes in the future. Finally, resign yourself that you will not change your driving and that you had better document this for the next time you will end up doing this.

This a GREAT DIY and a very useful one since i have seen many who are due to get their bearings changed out, this can save everyone couple hundred dollars in labor!

Thanks for the good share!

WOW! Amazing job on the detail and pictures I think a thanks is adieu to you kind sir.

Good job. The only thing I would add is clean and grease the splines of the axle while they're exposed. A tube of Valvoline synthetic grease is only $6.

What part do we order? It's not just a wheel bearing that needs to be pressed in?

No. Unfortunately it's not a wheel bearing and races that can be punched out. Lubed and pressed back in.

This is an entire wheel hub assembly. Not sure of the cost. I got mine at the stealership. There are some after-market ones too. It is self-contained and pre-lubed but it can be a real pain to DIY or very expensive to have the garage do this....

My goal was to document my lessons learned for the rest of us here...

Thanks. Yeah, I actually prefer that you can buy the whole wheel hub assembly because of the reason you mentioned--it can be a pain to DIY if you have to have the bearing pressed out and installed. I wonder if Autozone has a reman assembly with new bearing, with core swap. I know they do for some makes/models.

BTW, since you have the hub off, if you don't have the TSB brake judder splash shields on, now would be the time.

Nice job.

I have an 06 I need to do both front bearings on. Slightly different from 07+, but still helps to see.

Thanks for the write-up. I did this today. It went just like the write-up said. The only thing I found it necessary to do is remove the little steering stop restricting access to the lower, rearward bolt. I got to all the bolts, broke them free and torqued them afterwards with a 1-1/2" extension, and only needed the universal joint to thread the bolts all the way in and out.

For those who were asking, for the 2007 G35X, the part number is 40202-EJ70B, and it's called "HUB ASSY-ROAD W". I paid $144 each from infinitipartsusa.

What I was experiencing is a whirling, growling sound from about 10 m.p.h. up to about 65. Above 65, I didn't hear anything even with the bad bearing. I also heard some clacking from the wheel when I went over a particularly jarring pothole. This is what gave me the clue as to which wheel hub was shot.

While I was pissed that such a repair would be necessary at 72K, it went really well and was not much harder than a brake job.

Great info

Great Job! Thanks for the feedback!:biggthumpup:

This is precisely the reason why the form community is PRICELESS.

Great job, keep up the good work!

This thread came in handy yesterday, thanks!

Thought I'd post my sob story. I posted earlier in this thread about how easy this job was. I did the drivers side wheel hub/bearing at 72K. At the time, I bought a second hub, expecting to change the passenger side at a later date. Well that one finally went at 126K. I went out to change it expecting a smooth job just like before.

Well. Hub was seized onto the axle shaft. I tried PB blaster, tapping as shown in the tutorial, a 2-jaw puller, a FWD hub puller that bolts onto the lugs, a lead hammer, then an engineer's hammer, eventually I beat the **** out of it with a sledgehammer. I could not separate. I tried to remove the axle from the transmission and couldn't do it. I beat the hell out of it so much that I f'd up the snout of the axle.

I put it back together without the nut and drove it to the garage. They installed my hub, and had to install a new axle which had to be purchased from Nissan for $700 as no rebuild was available. I asked how they got it off and the guy laughed and said they finally beat it off with the biggest sledgehammer they had.

I heard the same story from someone who owns an M who had this happen at the dealership.

Anyway, two extra years of rust (I'm in Massachusetts) ruined my day and turned this job from a breeze into a bitch. I wish Infiniti would smear the splines with anti-seize from factory.

So sorry to hear about that. I remember it took some serious pounding to get it out on mine. I'm afraid I have one going again but I'm putting it off as long as I can.

Nice for them to get the thing up in the air to pound it underneath. At least you know you didn't waste money on this job. Nothing makes me more angry than finding out I could have done it but just didn't know how....

At least that's what I tell myself.