Rear Wheel Bearing Removal. An alternative approach that worked!

[DerekHa]

Hi there,

New here and thought I'd share my experience on how I removed the offside (drivers) rear wheel bearing assembley from an old 2006 Peugeot 107!

Had watched several Utube video's, not sure I can mention that name directly here, showing several means to remove the bearing.

Raising the car and removed the road wheel and brake drum first, then had problems undoing the 4 x 12mm blots holding the bearing onto the rear axle and brake drum back plate. All heavily corroded and the 12mm socket/spanners just turned, an 11mm wouldn't fit. After a good rumage in the bottom of my tool box found a very old 1/4BS 3/16W socket that fitted well, after plenty of pentrating oil the bolts released relatively easily. Very lucky that socket hadn't been binned long ago!

Set to work with a slide hammer and a hub puller as shown in one video, as I had these already. Lots of penetrating oil but no sign of anything moving at all. Cleaned back all the corrosion I could find around the back of the bearing where it's exposed to all the elements but made no difference.

Then read an article on this form suggesting a makeshift hub puller or pusher using M10 threaded bar with 6 nuts. Two lengths of 15cm of M10 bar passed through two opposing wheel bolt holes with a washer and nut placed behind the outer bearing flange and then two nuts on the very end locked together so the make shift pusher could be held whilst turning the 3rd nut to force the bearing from it's housing pushing against brake backplate.

Two days trying these in varying combinations and the most the bearing moved was well under 1mm, even after the application of a heavy club hammer! A wrecked slide hammer and stripped thread repeatedly on most of the M10 bar I'd bought. Gave up after the second night and had a rethink.

Third time, after a day off, I decided on a  different approach! Found an old heavy duty metal drift about 25cm long and just the right diametre to fit between the bearing outer flange and the forward brake shoe resting the end against the top righthand lobe of the wheel bearing mounting and with the trusty lump hammer pounded until the mounting plate started to rotate anti clockwise, did the same on the bottom righthand lobe of the bearing mounting and watched as the mounting rotated back clockwise. More penetrating oil and repeated the process until the bearing mounting plate began to rotate more easily.

Now I thought why use a hub puller/pusher when I could use the four bearing mounting bolts. Replaced them, having realigned the holes, but leaving each bolt undone by about 3 to 6mm. Placed the 3/16W socket with a long extension bar attached so I could work around the rear spring on the corroded blots and hit each in turn with the club hammer.

To my relief the gap between the back plate and the mounting flange increased quickly and the bearing was nearly out.

Removed all four mounting bolts and with a good tug the whole bearing came straight out like a "good Un"! No need for a slide hammer, hub puller or improvised tools.

Dare say the penetratiing oil having had three days to work and all the failed attempts to remove the bearing may have made some difference towards the bearing finally coming free with my own take on removal. This seemed to work so much better than all the other ways I'd seen or had read about. Driving the bearing mounting to rotate in alternate directions until it turned fairly freely made a huge difference and also allowed to me to leave the brake shoes in place and left the old bearing relatively unscathed in the event I needed to refit it.

Hope someone else here might find this a good alternative approach to removing these rear wheel bearings, they're a real nightmare.