John Hart

Hello,

I have a 1999 Cavalier that I am trying to remove the Passenger Side Front Bearing Assembly. The manual instructions are very clear...Remove the axle nut...remove caliper...remove rotor...remove three mounting bolts....remove bearing assembly.

I've gotten all the way to the "Remove Bearing Assembly" part and this thing is obviously stuck due to rust..corrosion...age...whatever. I have tried pounding on it with a hammer...wedging chisels and screwdrivers between the flange and the knuckle housing....heat with a torch...penetrating oil....everything.

The only reason I quit trying was from exhaustion from pounding.

Does anyone have an idea how to remove this dang thing? I'm including a picture of the assembly and where I tried to apply some chisel action.

Thanks

MDTAHOE

You may need to use a 5 lbs slide hammer attached to the wheel studs.

John Hart

Thanks MD...yeah...I gave that a try last night. All it did was tear the bearing apart. (probably due to all the pounding I did previously)

But no matter. Yesterday, I made a decision how to resolve this, so I executed my plan with success, and thought I'd document my results for future use.

First thing I tried was the slide hammer. Rented the tool from Advance Auto and gave it a try. A couple of whacks later and the bearing housing broke and separated so I had nothing left to work with.

So my plan was to remove the entire steering knuckle and pound it out from the backside. (This is the standard method for some chrysler products where the bearing mounting bolts come in from the back....so I had some experience with that.)

The steering knuckle actually came off pretty easy. Two bolts on the strut, one nut on the tie-rod end, and one nut on the lower ball joint. Heh heh...the hardest part was getting that dang cotter pin out of the lower ball joint.

Anyway..the spring loading from the strut and the control arm really wasn't bad and the assembly came right out.

I clamped the steering knuckle in a vise and tried to knock it out from the back. The rust and scale was pretty bad, and it still didn't seem to want to budge. By this time, there were little ***** falling out...races bending....your basic death and destruction.

Then I took a tire iron/pry bar and hit it with a small sledgehammer into the flange interface....and FINALLY got some movement! After that...it was fairly simple to tap around evenly and pull what was left of the assembly out.

Then I thoroughly scraped the bore free of rust clumps...sanded and polished the bore...put a little grease in there and got a nice firm slip-fit with the new bearing.

Put the car back together and test drove. Glad that's over.

Funny thing is....trying to pound it out while on the car...took 3 hours...and was unsuccessful. Removing the steering knuckle, start to finish, was 2 hours.

Your choice. Either way is zero fun.