Toyota Highlander front wheel bearing growling.....

Finally after the holidays and school vacations have passed we are finally to squeeze in what we anticipate to be a 2+ day job replacing the front wheel bearings on the 2003 Toyota Highlander we diagnosed over a month ago.....

The first thing to come off is the nut for the sway bar link......what do you think happens? Well, we are in the liquid calcium capital of the world....New England. They are rusted in place....we have to cut them off.....the truck came in on Thursday and we purchased all the parts we thought we would need, but there are going to be parts we could not anticipate such as these sway bar bolts. We have a very good rapport with out local Toyota dealer, so we get him on the telephone right away and let him know what we need and we will probably be calling him again before the day is out. 

Next the caliper bolts come out and it is tied off entirely to the inner fender liner , the ABS sensor is disconnected....and

Notice the bearing assembly to the right , only one side was growling, but a good rule of thumb is to replace both because just when one is done the other side will go bad, MURPHY'S LAW.

Mr. Fix-it uses the 20-ton press his grandfather built and his father painted in the 50's to push these rusted bad boys out and hones out the residual rust and starts re-assembly. Remember from an earlier post that we use anti-sieze in this shop religiously. So we paint it on and all is re-assembled. The only other victim in this scenario was the dust covers for the ABS tone ring. Apparently at the local dealer once they rip them off, they are very soft, almost aluminum -like and technicians cant be bothered to reinstall them ?^&*&...why not? I think they hope ABS sensor goes bad so they can get more work into their shops. It takes another minute or two to reinstall them and only a few dollars apiece to replace them.....we are not looking for any more in the shop right now, so we aren't going to try and create it.....

Putting this back together goes more smoothly than taking it apart. While the strut tower was out Mr. Fix-it also changed the castle nuts along with installing new stainless steel cotter pins so when the lower ball joints go bad, and they eventually will, he can get them out easily.  Because with it all together it would be almost impossible to get these rusted parts out....a little preparation ahead for a job that will probably be done down the road.