Since I have a lot of my car apart I was thinking of maybe replacing my wheel bearings. Have any of you HAD to replace them? What was the mileage on them?

 

i replaced all 4 on my gxl with 106k miles.

The rear driver side was making a real nice hum at 60mph.

Unfortunately i didnt narrow it down to the rear until after i replaced both fronts.

The front ones are a bitch to replace. Mazda tries to sell you a whole new hub, but you can get just the bearings. if you have a press, i suppose you can press them out, but what i had to do was grind through the race with a die grinder, being very careful not to nick the hub. Then i pounded em out with a hammer and chisel. It took forever and it sucked bad.

The rear ones are super easy, just in and out.

 

When I did my 5-lug swap, I discovered the rear hubs hummed, more like roared the faster I got. I had no idea what the mileage on those parts was. I didn't know which side it was, or both, so I just got both done. After doing a little research, I just paid a shop to do it for me.

 

I need to do that soon im getting that noise at 60mph

 

I have 150k on mine with no humming... I think I will just wait until they go out..

 

can you like feel it in the steering wheel?

 

Eep! My FC has 173k on the body! Should I be scared? @_@



Some of the bushings are lookin pretty bad, so I'll need to get those replaced some time soon.

 

I guarantee those are playdough by now!

 

cant feel it in the wheel at all. but the hum was like baldy said, a roar. it would drowned out my radio and exhaust at highway speeds.



The rear bearings probably took me about a half hour a piece, and the fronts were probably closer to 3 hours a piece, man those things sucked ***.

 

Actually, there's a how-to floating around somewhere on the front bearings. If you take a dremel and make two notches in the hub 180 degrees apart such that you can get a drift behind the races, you can pound them out. Once you have the notches, the next time will be easy. The right front on my car was way bad when I got it with 99k on the clock. It's not an easy procedure, but quite do-able.