Yes, you can learn how to replace the front wheel bearings on your car or truck. Eric shows you how to repair your own truck wheel bearings, using his Ford F150. The front wheel bearings of his truck are making that classic wheel bearing 'whorl' sound, so we take an afternoon to make a wheel bearing video.
Front wheel bearings are usually easy to replace, but can be a bit messy, wear latex or nitrile gloves and save your hands from grease. Buy the new wheel bearings and new wheel bearing grease before you start, and work on one wheel at a time. It helps if you have a car repair manual, we like the Haynes manuals, available here.
You need only basic car tools to do this, it helps to have few wood blocks to prop up the hub while working on it. You might also consider changing the disc brake pads while you're replacing the front wheel bearings, since you have to remove the disc brake calipers to remove the wheel hub anyway. here is a video we did on how to replace your disc brake pads.
Consider having the disc brake rotors turned, or replacing them also, again, since you have to remove these to work on the bearings.
Be sure to safely raise the front of the vehicle off the ground using jackstands.
Have some suggestions or questions? let us know below:
Joe Rose
This was a well done video on replacing wheel bearings. I am not very mechanical in practice, but after watching the video i would tackle this job!
Thanks
GLY
Overall a great video, takes longer than what is here, but should be obvious. When packing the bearing, if you put some grease in your palm, you can put the bearing in the other hand and push down into the grease over and over, but always watch to make sure the grease get inside all of the bearing areas, and never, never use air pressure to spin the bearings, wears them out very fast.
Another thing, you sort of show it, but when putting in the seals, it's easy to damage them, thus be very careful and don't use metal on metal, even the smallest dent can cause the seal to leak, thus destroying the bearing.
Wade from Canada
Your grease packing style while wearing dirty gloves made me cringe, and as GLY mentioned, palm full of grease method is most effective. Next time I have a bearing in my hand, likely next weekend at work, I'll snap a quick video on the iphone.
You should always use a brass or aluminium punch, at least for install and if you freeze the race first it goes in much easier. Seals can be tapped in using a big socket. That's about the only metal you should use other than a race driver.