I recently, last night actually, tried to replace my wheel bearings in the drivers and passengers side front wheels. I had decided to do so since I was experiencing a nasty "whubwhubwhub" sound from the right during straight line driving and it only got worse when I turned, though a little to the right and it went away. So my first mistake was waiting until 6pm to start anything but I had other things to do and the car needed to be in one peice, its my daily driver. After going out to buy some sockets and get bearing grease I had forgotten the day before I dove in with a friend to help disassemble the units. the brake rotors had rusted themselves to the hubs on both sides and the right side has some of the worse wear ive ever seen though the pads are good. We get to pulling the bearings out and notice it wasnt high temp grease in it to begin with (im the 4th owner of the car and only had it since april....looking for things like this wasnt high on the list, a job was.) So with that aside we get teh left side completely apart and cant get the bearing races from out of the hubs, nor the hubs out of the rotors.

But my question is this: Do I go ahead and try to search junkyards and ebay for useable 4-lug hubs and get new brake rotors? Or Do I go ahead and convert to 5-lug hubs and complete a portion of my own to do list for the car. Any advise is appreciated.

 

http://www.mazdatrix.com/faq/frontbrg.htm



Good writeup on how to change the bearings.

 

Thanks for the writeup, though I had surmised that doing something like that would be bad for the hub, and besides judging from my bad hub i have to replace them anyway.