What is the best replacement part on RockAuto? Timken is the most popular brand. But, the Timken part with ABS sensors is $85 each. Those without ABS sensor is $103 each (TIMKEN HA590371). This is really messed up! It is the same for Centric. Those w/o ABS sensor is more expensive than with. How can this be true? From this video, we can simply pry a the ABS tone ring off and turn it into a non-ABS hub assembly?

For those without ABS, BECK/ARNLEY (BECK/ARNLEY 0516350) is $53 each. This seems to be my best choice budget wise. Do I have to pony up an additional $50 to get Timken? Thanks for advice!

(OEM part number is Toyota 42410-33040. Too much. Almost $400.)

If I re-use the hub, the Timken, Moog, Raybestos and Centric bearing for those without ABS are all $40 each. So is it recommended to press in and out the bearings myself? I don't mind buying tools. I am just worried whether I can press the bearing in perfectly. Any opinions?

 

I wouldn’t be so sure your wheel bearing is bad. The noise could be the drum brake dragging a bit.

I’d guess with drum brakes, you don’t have to completely remove the brake shoes. Just enough to get the hub assy out.

As for part mfr choice, I’ve used several eBay cheapies with good results. The one I mentioned in my DIY still sells on eBay for $38.

That ABS tone ring comes off easily. But I’m not sure you have to?

 

The driver side rear wheel brake drags a bit. A little scratch each turn. The passenger side is definitely not a drag. It sounds like metal balls clashing each other. I can hear noise related to bearings from passenger side. But I cannot tell if it is front or rear. But my daughter's ears are better and she told me it is from the rear. I checked it is indeed making funny noises. Those youngster's ears are certainly much better. I have always focused on the front wheel bearings b/c the front wheel and strut was damaged in a recent accident.

It is also possible that both are damaged. I need to take care of the rear first because I can hear the sound.

Also other youtube videos confirmed that I don't have to remove brakes. Yeah! A big relief.

You have been using those eBay hub assemblies for 11 years? Wow, not bad. On Amazon, I found 2 reviews for the B/A assembly. One is 5 start. One is 1 star. The bearing failed in one year. For the Timken, three reviews. 2 5 stars and 1 1 star. Also failed in 1 year.

 

I took a chance on cheap parts because they’re soooo easy to replace. I put the on my Avalon too, and haven’t had any go bad. I figure if one does, at $38 each, I’m still money ahead Vs buying them for $100.

I see from my DIY the prices on these have dropped a LOT!

 

Yeah. The price dropped from $100 to $38? That is kinda crazy. I hope the quality has not dropped likewise. I really really do not continue to spend time on cars. Repairing this car after that accident sucked away all my time. So I'd rather pay a bit more for quality. If this is the only thing I need to do in a long while, I'd be much willing to take some risk. Waiting for other feed backs. RockAuto really should allow people to leave reviews on their site. A lot of experience got wasted now.

 

"That ABS tone ring comes off easily. But I’m not sure you have to?"

The Gen3 rear knuckles had two versions, only the ABS version had the extra clearance for the ABS ring machined into it.

Perhaps later knuckles (Gen4+?) were cast with the clearance shape in them to start with, so no need for machining and no need to have a "with" (*66) and a "without".

In any case, the fact the ring is so easy to remove, as you noted, just buy the cheapest one and adjust for fit accordingly.

Norm

 

Toyota did a nice job on being able to inspect/replace the rear wheel bearings on the Camry with rear drums. Looks like about a 15min job to remove the wheel, the drum, then remove the bolts holding the entire hub/bearing assembly on. Almost looks so easy, that if you suspect it's bad, just pull it, and feel it in your hands... then replace, or put back on (just torque correctly!).

 

For some strange reasons, the Timken rear hub assembly is a lot cheaper on Amazon. After shipping, it probably is only $5 more than Beck Arnley @ RickAuto. So I bought one there. This never happened before. Kind of strange.

Today the assembly was delivered. The package is quite fancy with some anti counterfeit features. It is clear it's made for Timken by some other manufacturer of unknown identity. Country of origin is not indicated.

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Installation was truly a breeze. I guess it is even easier on drum brakes. Just used impact gun to take out the bolts, remove and reinstall the assembly, torque all bolts to 59 ft lbs. Done. The only interesting part is that there are three holes on the assembly. A small one for adjusting drum brake, a big one for impact socket to remove the 14mm bolts. And there is a medium one. It was not big enough for impact socket. It is big enough for a 14mm hand tool socket. It is diagonal to the big hole. If you install one bolt using the big hole, you can use the medium hole to install another one. I guess it is made this way to balance the small hole vs the big hole.



I thought this is only necessary for drum brakes. Probably that is why no abs assembly is more expensive than abs version in general, and why it is not perfect to just pry off the abs tone ring from an abs assembly and use it on none abs cars.


However, I looked at rear hub for ABS cars. They also have three holes of different sizes. I guess this is needed to balance the hub. If there are only two big holes, it might be hard to position them on the assembly to be perfectly balanced.

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I took a test drive afterwards and most of the noise is gone! There is still some noise sadly because I think the driver's side rear wheel bearing is almost gone by now. When rear bearings fail, they fail in different ways. My passenger side failed and there's some small metal clunk sound. The driver's side is different. No metal clunk. Just really gritty. At first I thought it is brake drag. But when I tried to listen really carefully, the sound comes from the hub. Not from the edge of the brake. So I am going to order another one now.

Finally, some pictures of the assembly installed, my new struts, Moog links, and Whiteline RSB with the lateral link. Cheers!

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I took a test drive afterwards and most of the noise is gone! There is still some noise sadly because I think the driver's side rear wheel bearing is almost gone by now. When rear bearings fail, they fail in different ways.

Argh... pics remind me of the rear brake job we had to do yesterday. Detest doing drum brakes.

Diagnosis of wheel bearings is usually easy... jack up the car, and spin the wheel. If the pads/shoes aren't scrubbing, you can tell quickly if the there's too much lateral play, worn bearings, aged grease, etc. If it is slow to spin or makes noise... time to replace the bearings. It's just that drum-rear hubs are so easy to replace, it's almost preventative maintenance.

 

Timken stuff is usually USA made. I put a Timken rear hub on a '95 Camry V6 it worked fine but the center part of the hub was slightly larger so the factory alloy wheel went on a bit tight.

 

Damn, Amazon jacked up the the unit price from $70 to $112. Now I don't feel like to pay an extra $42 for it. So I bought a Beck/Arnley one from Amazon. It is still cheaper than RockAuto. This is the first time that RA lost my business after charging tax and its final price is higher than Amazon.

 

Yeah, I hate drum brakes too. But after 134k mikes, the original shoes still have quite some meat left. It's almost lifetime items. You need probably 250k miles to wear them out?

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So no country of origin on the part number sticker on the box either? On front bearings brand is stamped into the outer race’s edge. When assembled it’s hard to tell. Not to mention the hub and housing.

Even if it’s aftermarket I’d still think they selected suppliers more carefully. Of course no telling if it came from the same eBay factory.

Beck Arnley seems to source most of their parts from Taiwan now.

 

I was in a rush. Didn't look at the assembly very closely. Not on the box for sure. Looks like Beck has a warehouse near me. The second one will be delivered tomorrow.

I wish the front bearings are as easy to check as the rear ones. We cannot spin them fast enough to hear it up close

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Beck/Arnley rear wheel bearing was delivered. It did not come with a new o-ring to seal off the dust and brake dust.

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Now for some postmortem analysis. First is the damaged one with metal clunk. We can see that 3/4 of the grease is contaminated. Most of the grease looks like mud mixed with sand. Its bad.

Next is the less damaged one. The one on the driver's side. Here the grease looks better. But up close, some grease becomes small chunks.

It is responsible for about 5 to 10% of the total noise. Now with both replaced, I feel like I am gliding on ice. So smooth! It is funny that I always thought the front passenger side is responsible for all my problems. But it turned out that the rear wheel bearings are responsible.

Also given that the front bearings are working much harder than the rear ones, it is surprising that both front bearings are in much better shape. May the press-in bearings are more reliable? Or the front bearings are sealed. So they enjoy a longer life? If so, it will make sense for us to DIY a grease seal for rear bearings before we put them in again.

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Yeah, the front bearings have seals. The rear ones don’t, and rely on that o-ring to keep dirt out. Were the o-rings on yours in good shape?

 

The passenger side o-ring looks fine when I replaced it with the Timken unit. The Beck one doesn't come with a new o-ring, so I left the old one there. Should I buy a new o-ring and redo it? It really makes a lot of sense to use a sealed bearing there. I don't know what they're thinking of when the engineers decided to use an open bearing and rely on that o-ring to keep dirt out. This is especially terrible on drum brakes where all the dust is trapped there.

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I've never seen a bearing contaminated like that and the O-rings I've seen are always fine I don't use the supplied one. Almost looks like someone placed the hub down into the dirt then put it back on the car.

 

Maybe because your own o-ring is better? Which o-ring do you use?

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All my old stuff are Toyota factory parts. I also has not abused the car in any way. So I really believe the bearings should be sealed. Will be more than happy to pay $10 for that.

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Regarding sealed bearings, I'm sure that you could order them from a bearing house, measure the ones you've got and buy the same size, but sealed. If I recall correctly, Timken uses "-FF" suffix for double sealed ones.

On the other hand,
How many miles are you getting out of your rear wheel bearings?

The ones in the last two Camrys of mine went 200,000 miles, and were still good as new then.

Just sayin

 

Both of mine are done at 134k miles. If I keep it long enough, there is a chance that I might need to change them again. By then, I probably will try the $38 eBay unit.

 

Since the rear bearings are not sealed. Is it possible that Toyota expects owners, the harder working type, to remove the old grease, clean it up and pack it with new grease? Is there an efficient way to get all the old grease out? If that is expected or if this can help the rear bearing last, I don't mind to do it. The most difficult part is to get the old junk out and find a proper grease to pack in.

 

I am thinking about pulling out the damaged bearings and pressing in new ones. A new eBay assembly is only $38 and a new bearing by itself will be roughly that from RockAuto. So this is more for fun, instead of finding the most economic way of getting the car back on road.


This video is very good.

This is also a good one to press in front wheel bearings. But there is no axle hole for rear bearings. So I am not sure whether it works here.

So just get the Harbor Freight bearing separator set, a two jaw big puller, and a bearing installation tool set, we can remove the old bearings.


Here is the HF bearing separator and puller set. It looks that that puller can replace the two jaw puller.

https://www.harborfreight.com/bearing-separator-and-puller-set-62593.html
Here is the HF bearing installer set
https://www.harborfreight.com/10-piece-bearing-race-and-seal-driver-set-63261.html
or
https://www.harborfreight.com/Front-Wheel-Bearing-Adapters-63728.html


Looks like just getting these two set of tools can get the bearings out. If anyone can suggest better tools or better method for rear bearings, please help! Thanks.

 

The HF bearing adapters set is not cheap at all. Looks this one from eBay is probably the same at half price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/23-PCs-Fro...-Wheel-Drive-Bearing-Removal-Adapter-Puller-Pulley-Tool-Kit-W-Case/201875497895


Also this two-part video is very good for front wheel bearings. Not very applicable for the rear.

 

I cleaned it up a bit. There's no typical inner or outer race. The whole thing with the flange is one unit. I am curious how they managed to put the balls in in the first place.

Looks I need to first pry up that yellow tab, remove the axle nut, then use the bearing separator to pull the whole thing away from the hub? Fairly straightforward. What's the best way to pry out that yellow tab? Thanks. Never did it before.

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I did it once to see how it was put together in this DIY.

Scroll down towards the bottom to see how I did it.

Probably not the official Toyota way, but it got the job done.

https://www.toyotanation.com/forum/...y-2000-camry-le-rear-rotors-pads-shoes-caliper-re-build-many-pics-part-1-a.html

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I did it once to see how it was put together in this DIY.

Scroll down towards the bottom to see how I did it.

Probably not the official Toyota way, but it got the job done.

https://www.toyotanation.com/forum/...y-2000-camry-le-rear-rotors-pads-shoes-caliper-re-build-many-pics-part-1-a.html

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Nice. I see that you also complained about not using a sealed bearing there. For me, I actually did not see excess grease being thrown everywhere. I guess you had it because you added extra good stuff there. Can you think of a way to DIY a seal there? Can we find a seal for other bearings and press it into the bearing?



The locking tab is officially called a staked axle nut. To bend it back is called unstaking an axle nut. You used a large breaker bar, and it should be the same as me using an impact gun. Both work. However, I read somewhere that our method would not work well if the staking is over threaded portion of the hub. Can you remember whether the tip of the hub (where the dent is) has any threads? If no threads there, I would feel completely assured.


Also pressing in the new bearing is hard without a big press. Most of the compact, on car, type of bearing installers using a big bolt going through the hole reserved for the CV axle. For the rear bearing, it is hard. There is no hole here. The only way I can think of is to put a short piece of a large diameter pipe there and pound the bearing onto the hub using a big hammer. Not safe or elegant. So if anyone can think of a nicer approach w/o using a big press, that will help a lot.