CNY_Dave

Having just domne my '03 front bearings on one side, there are 3 critical items (aside from grease) 1) the hub has to be cherry. No marks that go around it in a circle, no discolorations from heat, no lip no matter how small. 2) when pressing in the hub the inner race of the bearing on the bottom of the assembly must be well supported. 3) Torquing the axle nut is more important than you might think- must be done with no weight on the bearing (according to the service manual) and you have to turn that thing for a seemingly long time to draw the two inner races together on the hub. The suybaru tool does this, I think, but if you use a press the races are not in position until the nut stops turning and reaches the full torque value (very soon after it stops turning har5d, but smoothly with no torque increase as you turn it). Dave

It could be that the clutch pack housing has become grooved, and the plates sometimes get stuck in the 'compressed' position. This could also (maybe) be why AWD has stopped working- plates get stuck in the uncompressed position, then stuck in the compressed position. Dave

A drill, tap, and insertion tool come with the helicoil kit. I've heard a timesert is stronger and better, but a helicoil is usually stronger than the original threads and fine for almost any repair. Dave

I would believe the factory grease. I bought the car with 55,000 miles on it and it needed front brakes, it probably had the factory pads or one set done before I bought it. Making sure the rubber seals are watertight is probably a big key. Dave

My '03, northern NY, 102000 miles, all 8 sliders slide just fine, I don't think the rubber has ever been pushed back on any of 'em. Dave

Ah, so it keeps the caliper from sliding back and forth too easily. They probably engineered that in after they found vibration would let the caliper slide into the pads and force the piston back a tiny bit, necessitating pumping the brakes to get the piston back where it should be. Dave

If more than one wheel is *slightly* out of balance, and the wheels are indexed such that they cancel each other out, you get a smooth ride. You go around a turn, and change the indexing (phasing) such that 2 or more are now shaking in the same direction at the same time, and you feel the shaking. I had what you describe when I had a lot of crud on the wheel-hub interface, the wheels were never quite parallel to the hub, or centered quite right. same thing, just adding out-of-round to the out-of-balance, except that no amount of balancing would fix it. Dave

*Front* wheel drive car, not critical. *AWD Subaru*, very critical. Dave

The vibration could be because the spare is not balanced, or it may be the road surface noise being transmitted by the low profile/high pressure tire. Dave

I have a hard time believing a hub tamer would have worked on that wheel bearing job! At one point (removing the outer race) I had to put a considerable amount of force onto the extension handle for the press pump-jack. If it's at capacity (20 tons) when you are pulling as hard as you can on the extended handle, then I must have used 10-15 tons. The hub came out without too much fanfare, but pressing that bearing outer-race out took much more force. Press worked pretty sweet. Job would have been seriously tough if I didn't have quite a collection of metal bits, old bearing races, old transmission gears, and an old sprocket. Only hard parts, really, were getting the ABS sensor out undamaged (at least 40 minutes) and (of all things) getting a rusted cotter pin out of the tie rod end (about 30 - 40 minutes). Thought I was going to have to remove the tie rod end and drill it out on the drill press. Getting the axle loose in the hub was a real pain, but not really worse than I figured it would be. Tried a tool I built quick the other day to press the axle out, but it wasn't strong enough. Had to use the big hammer. On the splines there was this really hard dark-gray crunge that was very hard, had to really scrape at it with a screwdriver to clean it up. It looked like grease that had been cooked to the point of turning it into cement. There was much joy when I got the knuckle free and spun the hub, and it was noisy. Hub was pristine. The races weren't in horrible shape but the rollers were discolored and were starting to pit on the bad bearing. There was still a fair bit of grease in the bearing. Pressing the hub into the new bearing really takes just the right size piece, as you have to support the inner race of the bottom bearing with something that will fit inside the grease seal and support the bearing without touching the bearing cage. I saw in the manual that it is very important to not put any weight onto the bearing until the nut is fully preloaded. After seeing how much the nut turned and drew the two inner races together on the hub before starting to preload the bearing I can see why- you could have all the weight on the corner of just one roller. After tightening the nut as much as possible before the brakes were on, then with the brakes back together and locked it turned one or two times with a fair bit of force (one or both inner races are sliding on the hub) then when it got the bearings together it reached the 159 ft-lbs with almost no turning at all. With lunch in there, and a little presswork for JohnC from here, it was about 9 hours from start to test-drive. I was taking it a bit slow just to be sure I didn't hose anything. John, thanks for the company and the third hand for some of those tricky bits! Dave

I found some of the info you guys found, but not the honda part link- the manual says to apply grease to the seal lips, I've heard from a few sources the grease comes packed into the seal lip already. Thanks, I just don't want to spend any time flopping around saturday doing this wheel-bearing job... Dave

I thought for a compression test you normally would use the starter to spin the engine? Dave

So what the heck is Shell (or showa) 6459N wheel bearing grease? The manual states to add some grease to the wheel bearing seals, and that it has to match. Dave

Looking at my 01-03 russian-download legacy manual, it doesn't specify a depth- the recommended subaru tools probably set the depth automatically. From the pic it looks like the part of the hub that flares out should be just short of the seal, if you drive the flared part into the seal the seal probably won't work, and it would probably cause a bit of drag when turning the hub (as reported by tcspeer in another thread). So using the polish line from the seal as the indicator is probably best if you're re-using the hub. Dave

Yep, you beat me to it by this much (holding up 2 fingers). Dave

So far bgambino is a maybe and johnc, haven't heard from you yet. Let me know so I can figure if I'm going to do it during the week, or saturday. Dave

message sent- Dave

Stormville, hey, they still doing the flea market? I group up a few miles from sylvan lake. This is going to be the front bearing, 2003 outback LL bean, but applicable to any subes that use the press-in bearing, I think. If no one is going to head over I will probably do it this thursday, if anyone wants to come I'll do it this weekend, probably saturday (the parts stores are open longer!) Dave

If you were that lean' I'd expect a code. Dave

Thanks for the lookout on pressing the hub in too far. I'll have to remind myself to measure it, I can use the rust line if I reuse the hub, if I use the new one I'll need that measurement. Dave

It could also be crud buildup on the wheel-hub interface, especially if you have alloys. I had to take a few hours and fight that battle, recently. Dave

I just got dome kumho solus KH16's, have only had a little wet weather so far and they've been good. Which tire dod you get? Dave

It's probably sufficiently crushed that it's gripping the threads so it doesn't fall off, and the head is smooshed enough that it looks like part of the bolt head. Dave

I have seen oversize pads also. When they stamp the backing the tooling is worn (or was crappy to begin with) and there is a smear of metal where it should have sheared cleanly. We just bought an '05 forester with 30Kmiles and it had a sticky caliper I had the dealer replace before we picked it up- it can happen on something fairly new, and with no outwards signs, sometimes it just happens. Dave

The wheel bearing noise doesn't usually come/go with being on/off the throttle, but it could. Wheel bearings will commonly (but not always) stop making noise when you turn left or right. The trick mentioned about putting your hand on the spring seems to work, on mine one spring is 'smooth' and the other I can feel the vibration. Dave