Bearings in the front knuckle
- Thread starter Yves1970
- Start date
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If they haven't been greased regularly in addition to greasing the wheel bearings then they wear out. They need a separate procedure just to reach those needle bearings and its brass bushing hiding behind the main wheel bearings.
Actually, I'm in the same situation as you are. I was simply unaware. I have parts arriving early this week and will dig into it asap. I have 214K miles and they have never been serviced. The worst case situation is that I have damaged my knuckle spindles and that's an expensive oversight. Owner's manual says the wheel bearings should be inspected/repacked every 30K miles and the roller bearings at the same time.
I think it’s recommended to service the wheel bearings every 30k miles but I wonder if that’s true of the spindle needle bearing also. I can’t imagine fully removing the hub/cv every 30k.
There is a special tool that allows greasing this bearing without the full disassembly of the front hub. It's made by Slee Offroad. Apparently there is also a special service tool similar to this that dealerships use. They're out of stock right now but I'll be picking up one when possible. I've also seen a thread that discusses greasing from the axle side by removing the hex nuts holding the axle in place. It's somewhat more invasive but doesn't require a special tool.
You can also build the tool out of a PVC cap and threading in a grease zerk, there's threads on that too.
Very helpful. Here's a LINK to a video on that.
The grease travels through the center of the axle shaft to the needle bearing?
Just trying to understand how the grease tool works.
The grease travels around the outside of the axle but inside of the spindle. Removing the axle external clip and pushing the axle splines inward creates a bit of space for the grease to flow around the axle and into the roller bearing/bushing area. The excess grease comes out the backside of the shaft behind the knuckle. If you watch what you're doing you can see this excess grease and stop, or clean it up later, or leave the slight excess in place and it will be squished when you pull the axle splines back into the hub and attach the axle external clip you removed to begin the job. The area of the inner and outer wheel bearings live are not affected by this procedure. Packing these bearings is a separate job.
A long overdue follow up: I replaced the bearings as discussed. 215,000 miles, and they've never been serviced, and they're fine.. The bearings looks great. Go figure. I think they've been lubricated by maybe some leakage from the axle shafts as well as somewhat from the wheel bearing grease. In any case they were fine. I did replace them since I was already in there though. Getting to them was pretty routine. I rented to sets of tools from the auto parts store. One set for popping my ball joints and tie rods, as needed, and the other for pulling the needle bearings and brass bushing out. As it turned out the puller for the needle bearing and bushing didn't work at all. I spent too much time trying to make it work but it would just slip off the bearing, so I just worked from the other side of the steering knuckle and tapped them out with a long screwdriver. Easy peasy. What wasn't easy peasy was getting the new needle bearings back into the steering knuckle. I tried tapping it in. I then tried using some all-thread, washers and nuts to pull it in. I then tried freezing the bearing to shrink it. I then tried freezing the bearing with dry ice. Nothing worked very well. Some grease and the all-thread finally got the job done but a press is the best and right answer. Tapping in a new seal on the inside of the knuckle was easy and uneventful. I purchased an assortment of new circlips to get the proper clearance since I had replaced the bearing and seal. My original circlip was about in the middle of the range of the six available thicknesses and the renewed assembly used one that was one thickness different. I think buying all six circlips x 2 is the only way to do the job right. I repacked the wheel bearings, of course, and retorqued the wheel bearings during final assembly. The new bearings didn't really fix anything but I do sleep better at night knowing that they're good for a long time coming. I'll fashion a PVC cap with a Zerk fitting for lubing these bearings in the future.
