I've never been this frusterated in my life.

Go to replace wheel bearing and noticed the steering knuckle is aluminum.

I HATE aluminum parts, especially in snow country, because aluminum welds itself to steel. I've had aluminum wheels where I've had to loosen all the lug nuts and drive the car at 5mph until the wheel came undone.

No exception with this car, and I used everything in my power to remove the wheel hub, and it finally came apart.

Ya, it came apart alright, the freaking wheel hub separated! Now the rest of it is still inside the knuckle.

So I prep it to have a shop press it out, and the nut for the tie rod end won't budge. It's a regular castle nut with some kind of hat shaped washer integrated in it.

Go to take it off, and the top part of the nut literally crumbles. It's the OEM tie rod end as well. So I even try heating it and using a better socket and a 40" breaker bar, and the nut rounds off.

I'm so upset. Not only am I going to have to part a shop money, but using aluminum like this is idiotic.

 

I got the hub off and what I thought was the dust deflector was the bearing itself, so it was really needed to be replaced.
The factory manual shows a dust deflector, but various manuals such as Haynes do not.
HOWEVER, anytime I ordered a wheel hub, it usually comes with a new one, and the one that came today did not.
Toyota said they typically don't even stock them.
When I pulled the axle out, I did not see a deflector, and it IS the original hub.

 

I saw a picture at the dealership and it was way too thick of metal for it to have rusted away.
Here it is in the FSM.

 

So I dug into the service records and the driver side wheel bearing as well as the driver side CV axle was replaced at 111,000 miles at a Toyota dealership.
I bought the car with 126,000 on it and strangely when I took it to Toyota for an alignment, they stated the axle was bad and was replaced with an AFTERMARKET axle. Which is odd because why would a Toyota shop put in an aftermarket axle, and why the hell did it break down in only 15,000 miles? I ended up putting a new factory axle in it and it now has 150,000 miles and is fine.

But when I replaced that driver side axle, I didn't see a dust shield either which means Toyota doesn't reinstall them either. The person at the parts counter said "it's not a part we typically stock".

It's also odd the passenger side, which is the one I just replaced the hub on, didn't have one either, and there was no indication it had ever been taken apart.