Front brake/hub bearing job = huge headache!
 

bold=important story skipping stuff

Ok, my cousin Karl just got a first gen rx-7. It's a 1983 GSL. The front brakes were neglected by the previous owner and they were being grooved by the metal pieced behind the ceramic part of brake pads. We pulled the caliper, took off the dust cover, removed the cotter pin, locking nut, adjustment nut, washer, and outer bearing. Ok, all is fine. Then we removed the hub, still going well, removed rear seal and rear bearing, piece of cake. Ok, after cleaning the bearings in gasoline and packing them with fresh grease, we go for the re-install with the new hub. According to the Hayne's manual, we missed a step "fill hub assembly cavity with grease"so we jump down to "tighten locking nut down until hub binds, then rotate outwards 1/6th of a turn and check for side to side movement. We tighten it as much as we could, but never managed to get the hub to bind. So we take the nut off ,and the hub won't come out! It's being held in by the washer, which is now hung up on the threads of the spindle. so we figure "if we tighten the nut down as far as we can, it will straighten out the washer on the flat face of the nut, and it will be re-aligned to come off of the spindle. Long story short, we were tightening it hen all of a sudden it got really easy to do. Either the spindle, or nut is striped. The nut is now stuck on the car. The hub has tons of play in it, and even in the event if we are able to get the nut out, the washer is stuck on the spindle extremely good, enough to not budge an inch to the point of stripping the nut. What did we do wrong? Is forgetting to pack and empty cavity full of grease enough to skew and mess up the washer? Also, is this car designed in a way that the nut strips before the spindle, or is this one of those hellish cars where this isn't the case? Lastly, how do we remove the lower ball joint, tie rod end, and shock to get the whole thing off of the car so that a machine shop can cut off the nut and washer?

I'm not sure about the thread stripping part, but to take it all off there is two bolts at the bottom of the strut. You shouldn't have to remove the tie rod end because it is attached by a streering arm on the ball joint. If you do need to remove it, remove the castle nut, then put the nut back on a few threads and hit the steering arm that the tie rod goes through until the tie rod breaks free, then remove the nut again. You will also have to remove the 4 nuts at the top of the strut tower under the hood. Then push the control arm down to remove the bottom from the steering arm and then pull the strut tower down and out. Oh, and don't forget to remove the brake line mount on the strut tower.

Yep; since you dont have the brakes back on yet, steps are:

Disconnect brake hose from strut
Remove two bolts on the bottom of the strut/spindle assembly, which connect it to the steering knuckle
Remove the four nuts up top that hold the strut bearing plate to the strut tower. You might want to support the lower control arm with a jack, so everything doesn't just fall out.

You could tackle this yourself with the parts still on the car; you'll probably end up having to split the nut with a dremel tool or something similar to get it off; no way to get a conventional nut splitter down into the hub well. This will be a bitch to do without munging anything else (it's a large and hardened nut), and you'll have to clean metal shavings out of everything in the hub and re-pack, but it might salvage your spindle and hub for you

The washer should not have skewed enough to jam on the threads. The grease packing should not affect alignment of parts, unless there was some other problem, like a bearing or race in wrong, something stuck in the bearing or grease preventing it from aligning, or the washer not being the proper size. The bearings align the hub to the spindle with a high degree of precision - - that's what they're for.

Once you get the nut off, you can probably free the washer by using a punch and hammer, and lightly tapping the washer near the "high" edge to pop the "low" edge out.

This is a weird one; inspect everything carefully before you clean out the grease, and see if you can find out what got you. And check the bearings against the spindle without the hub, see if they fit proper.

Good luck.

wow, i have never heard of this happening.

:AA:

If you drop the strut assembly with the upper strut plate attached make sure that you mark one of the bolts from the upper strut plate with the hole where it mounts or you will change the camber and you will have to have a front end alignment performed.

I know, figures that my cousin and I found a way to do it. We're going to try and save the new hub, but we're thinking the spindle is lost, and we'll have to get a new one from a parts car or something.