If your rear wheel bearing are making noice changing is easy

My right rear bearing had been making noise for a while at high speed then it got louder.

How did I know? By opening and closing one window at a time. The noise at the right rear window
was loudest. Before this it was just a pulsing sound but i thought the wheel must be out of balance.

I saw a video and it looked really easy to change. It showed the brake drum coming right off and the hub assembly doing the same. But I thought I can not count on this!

But still it look real easy, so I was less worried about ordering cheap parts made in China. (If they failed it was not so much work to replace them.) Hopefully that was smart - time will tell. When I ordered the part I saw that the assembly also included the wheel motion system for the anti lock brakes. My brakes were pulsing and I thought this will also fix that problem and it did!

My Prius is a 2007 with 270k miles on it so it could not be that easy but it was! I just hit the brake drum lightly with a hammer and it came loose.

Avi at Hybrid Fix, Los Angeles, CA (310) 426-8432 (a really nice guy) told me I did not need a brake drum puller because there also are two 8 mm threaded holes for getting the break drum off. He also warned me that if the brake drum was really stuck on the 8mm bolts would break so use penetrating oil first. But I had none of those problems but the holes do exist so no brake drum puller is needed.

The bearing assembly was also the same story. One light touch of the hammer and it was loose. The only difficult part was putting the new assembly in. The assembly fits in a exact hole so I used oil. The bottom was not as far in as the rest so again a light hammer blow and a little twisting to line up the four holes and done.

The only real problem I had was from a cheap torque wrench I had. I over tightened one bolt and it broke.

Also I did not have a lift so I just used the factory jack and blocks to keep the car from falling on me and two car lift ramps on both sides of a front tire to keep the car from rolling. Oh remove the ramps before you lower the car as you the body of the car will sit on the back ramp. (I had actually put the jack away before I realized this mistake.)

The four inside bolts that hold the bearing assembly are fairly easy to get to even with a car just jacked up by the factory jack.

Why was it so easy? The only explanation I have is car has spent its' entire life inland in Southern California so it has gotten no exposure to salt water or ocean air or freezing temperatures.

It was so easy I am now encourage to do the rest of the deferred maintenance on the car. Also my MPG went up 1 mpg from one wheel bearing.

Speaking of differed maintenance; if you carry pets or people in your rear seat please consider my filter for the hybrid battery cooling air. It can save you a lot of time cleaning out the fan for the hybrid battery. Please check it out at: http://www.elearnaid.com/fiforpr20to2.html


We also sell 12 volt batteries for the Prius.

Thanks for reading,

Bernie
eLearnAid.com