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Lotus in the Peak
28th - 30th June 2024

Rear Wheel Bearing Replacement


Gazlar53

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Well, my Elise has just failed the mot on a rear wheel bearing. I used the seloc wiki to change the front ones earlier in the year but can't find anything similar for the rear.

 

Can anyone point me in the direction of a guide? Assuming it's not snowing tomorrow id like to sort it!

 

Many thanks,

 

Gareth.

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It is very similar to the front.

The hard bit is the rear hub nut (or can be)!

The rest is an in bolt job, if you are handy with the spanners you will be ok.

Make sure the rear tow link doesn't change its set point or you will need a geo.

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Nice one, thanks. I've just gone through the workshop manual and it does seem similar to the fronts. If the weather holds I'll have a go tomorrow. The bearing in chillin' in the freezer ready!

 

Wish me luck.

 

Cheers

 

Gareth.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ok so I thought I'd give a bit of an update and a heads up into how the job went.

 

Firstly, removing the hub nut was a right pain. Whoever had been there before me had gone to town on the locking tab and it took quite a while to get off, typically my cold chisels were all too big so I ended up using various screw drivers which had little or no effect! Note to self, get a decent set of chisels!

 

I've not had this car long so there are still areas of it that I am yet to explore. The near side suspension components being one element! My car SHOULD have alloy hubs, and to be fair three quarters of them are. God knows why but the nearside one has been replaced for a steel one somewhere in its past life. Needless to say I wasn't very happy and a little p*ssed that I didn't spot it when looking at the car before buying!

 

On the upside, I cant see any sign of crash damage so I can only assume someone had goosed the threads or damaged the original hub when changing a bearing. Short term I've changed the bearing in the pig iron hub but long term I'm on the look out for a NS rear alloy hub if anyone can oblige??

 

Getting the hub off was fairly straight forward, no real issues other than a spinning ball joint stub making nut removal tricky as the ball joints didn't have allen key holes. I think chasing the exposed thread with a new nut before trying to remove the old one would have helped...

 

I struggled a little getting to the bottom caliper bolt, access seemed to be hindered by the hand brake cable sleeve and I couldn't see how to remove it. Thankfully I had recently purchase a set of allen keys from Halfords, not too sure what you'd call them but they are mounted like a swiss army knife, anyway they seemed to just about do the trick!

 

Once I'd got the hub off the real fun and games started....

 

The Circlips were seized solid, I'd used these pliers to remove the ones on the front hubs with no real issue but trying to remove the rears they just bent

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-cht686-10-254mm-circlip-pliers-set/

 

What do you expect for £11.49 I guess!!!

 

I think with alloy hubs they would be ok, as I suspect the circlips wouldn't have seized....

 

Anyway, I ended up buying these, thinking they would do the trick...

https://primetools.co.uk/product/sykes-pickavant-02830000-heavy-duty-universal-circlip-tool-set/?gclid=CP67pN3b6dACFRYTGwod4msDMA

 

Ok, not quite snap on but I crossed my fingers. They turned out to be quite good but still wouldn't shift them. I think if I had the ability to soak the hub in penetrating fluid overnight they might have done the job, unfortunately I had to keep the car on its wheels as I had a limited window to get this sorted.

 

I ended up using a mixture of heavy duty dremmel cutting discs to try and cut them with hammers and chisels to prize them out. By luck I had 2 spare circlips from when I did the fronts. It's well worth getting some spares if you're going to do this.

 

I did find on the second one I was able to use the prong on the pliers to leaver the circlip away from the hub and get a screw driver behind to break the seal and chase it round, I was concerned about snapping the prongs but maybe I should have tried this first off.

 

Anyway, rest of the job was fairly straight forward and as per the wiki guide for the fronts. My press is only a 6 ton one and I think the general recommendations that a 10 ton ones are correct, mine struggles a bit but will do the job but this might be worth noting if you're buying one.

 

If you get one of the bench mounted ebay ones like this

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-TONNE-HYDRAULIC-BENCH-PRESS-For-WORKSHOP-/320779323759?hash=item4aaff0096f:m:ma9D2aZDOciTIQ-HHAFe-gw

 

You'll need various solid packers to get the hub to the right level as the different heights you can set these at either seem to be too high or too low. I have a coulpe of 152x89 UB steel beam offcuts and they seem to work well.

 

Hope if anyone is looking to do this they find these notes useful, the job in itself is fairly easy if you have the right tools (which I didnt!)

 

Anyway, car now has an MOT and has been pressed into daily service as my other motor is playing up!!!

 

Cheers, 

 

Gareth

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