Just had my front wheel bearings on the X300 serviced at my local INDY shop. The bearings were fine and I had him just clean, grease them and put'em back in. That says a lot for a car with 140,000 miles on it. I had bought a set just in case they needed replacing which they didn't.

Talking to him later he told me he had checked the labor time on his program and the rear bearings called for five hours to service. We couldn't understand why the rear would be so much more labor intensive. What's so hard about the rear bearings.

He charged me $85 to do the work.

 

The rears are sealed bearings, so you can't just clean and grease them. The fronts are dino tech.

 

Yeah, the rears are a different ballgame

This is one part of a four part series that should give you the 'flavor' of the task

Welcome to Jag-lovers - Members Photo Viewing Page

Cheers
DD

 

It might just be a difference in terminology but they are not sealed in the most commonly used sense of the word.

Typically a 'sealed bearing' is one that cannot be disassembled and serviced. A sealed assembly (bearing or bearings, cup, and seal) is pressed into or bolted onto the hub. If it fails the entire assembly is replaced.

Sorta like this:


http://www.knowyourparts.com/public/...rossection.jpg


The X300 rear bearings are fully and individually serviceable.....it's just that a lot of labor is involved.

Cheers
DD

 

Hi EZDriver,

I think $85 to clean and repack the front wheel bearings is a very fair price. I would be very curious to know how he adjusted the bearings since there are multiple ways of doing it.

For most owners at 140,000 miles, I would personally have recommended the new bearings be installed. I just checked our forum sponsor SNG Barratt and they have bearings for around $30 per side, so for most folks reusing the old bearings might be a false economy.

Regarding the rear bearings, they're definitely more involved than the fronts, but they're not difficult, don't require any special tools, and would be well worth doing at your mileage. Here are all four sections of the photo album Doug linked to:

Rear Wheel Bearings Part 1 of 4
Rear Wheel Bearings Part 2 of 4
Rear Wheel Bearings Part 3 of 4
Rear Wheel Bearings Part 4 of 4

Cheers,

Don

 

Even so, I would almost rather have a root-canal
only "Special" $25 nuts (2 per car)
I'd agree. I did mine at 161k when the left rear was flagged by my alignment specialist as being too wobbly for alignment to stay in-spec. Right rear was fine, and really no economy of scale advantage to doing the other side at the same time except if you forget the order of the stack of everything in the hub you can take the other side apart and document it more carefully whilst doing so. Don's picture tutorial is excellent! I highly recommend it as a reference when performing this task (assuming you can't talk your dentist into performing a root-canal)

 

Thanks everyone for the excellent response. I feel the front bearing servicing will be good for several more years the way I drive it. But the back ones are another story. From all this info especially from what Bob said I think the best thing to do is replace the rear bearings before any problem comes about. That would be better than having to find one in a salvage yard and using that as an overhaul unit. Keeping track of the stack carefully and just replacing the old with the new bearings along with a new nut might be a prudent thing if I keep the car for a long time. Which I intend to do.

What do you think Motorcarman?

 

I'm not Motorcarman, and nowhere near as experienced, but I hope you don't mind me chiming in.....



Assuming they're well cleaned and packed, the seal is holding, and a high quality grease is used, a 30k miles service interval is what I stick with.



Opinions/philosophies about pre-emptive repairs vary, I'm am not asserting I'm right and someone else is wrong. I try to balance labor intensity, parts cost, and the possibility of making a mistake against the probability and consequences of a future failure.

If a $20 widget is notoriously prone to failure and takes only 20 minutes to replace....and failure would leave me stranded by the side of the road.... then it's a no-brainer. Replace it before it fails.

On the other extreme is something that takes hours to replace, is $100 in parts, and failure is unlikely to leave me stranded. I'd be unlikely to go through that on a 'just in case' basis.

It's easy to go wrong on rear bearing replacement. The replacement bearings might be slightly dimensionally different than the originals and/or might not be pressed into the *exact* same location on the hub as the originals....which would then require the sometimes frustrating task of setting up the bearings to get the specified pre-load. This can require buying new shims and a couple partial teardowns. This is a case a thousandths of an inch matters. If you're not careful you might end up worse off with new bearings than old.

I *think* Motorcar man has oft suggested buying a good used entire hub assembly as an alternative to replacing bearings. Hopefully he'll chime in.

On my X300 I did have to replace the RH bearings but the left side was still smooth and silent when I sold the car at 171k miles. I was quite happy to leave well enough alone.

Speaking to bearing replacement in general I'm a fan of case-by-case, replace as needed. On my XJR/6 I had to replace one front wheel bearing at just 30k miles, but the other three were still silent and smooth 141k miles later. Just last week I had the hubs apart on my 1985 Series III...coincidentally also 171k miles. One bearing was clearly bad, the other three still in perfectly good shape. Go figure !

Cheers
DD