6G Celicas Forums

I bought a Timken front wheel bearing for my 1995 Toyota Celica ST. And I bought inner and outer seals too.
But in the service tech manual I found the outer and inner race, snap ring, and dust deflector. I don't have these on hand.
Someone said the races come with the bearing so that I don't bother to buy more races.

Could anyone clarify this idea? Do I need to buy additional outer and inner races, snap ring, and dust deflector?

Thank you!





This post has been edited by dangqiwu: Jan 2, 2013 - 11:25 PM

If u look.carefully... the inner race is just the cover to the ball bearing. The image you posted is all you need plus the inner and outter seals.

Great to make this clear. I begin to understand the bearing. Thanks.

Btw, do I still need the snap ring or dust deflector?

You can use the existing snap ring and dust deflector.

I am familiar with the illustration above, have all those parts and am ready to build the assembly.

In the FSM (BGB) there is an installation procedure for putting these parts together. It also installs the lower ball joint in the procedure. It, however, leaves out the installation of the inner and outer oil seals and I am trying to figure out at what point in the assembly process I should install these oil seals.

If I install them right after I install the snap-ring, which is the first time it would be possible to install both, and later install the hub, will installation of the hub do any damage to the oil seals?

when you take the old one apart the bearing may very well have separated into pieces, and the inner race is stuck to the hub with no way to pull on it.
we used a little dremol cutting wheel to zip it off.

What you say may be true and people may actually reuse their snap rings and dust deflectors, but I note (for accuracy) that (at least for the 1994 Celica) the FSM (SA-12) declares that the snap ring, dust deflector, oil seals, and wheel bearing are all NON-REUSABLE parts, so they are saying that all should be purchased when replacing a bad front wheel bearing.

It would be surprising to find anyone who thought they could re-use their bearing or oil seals, but the snap ring and dust deflector might not be so readily apparent to them.

I can give you one example of a need to buy a new dust deflector. Recently, I planned on re-using my dust deflector when reassembling my front axle hub assembly, and I got the chance to try it out this past weekend. From initial use, or cleaning, the dust deflector had become no longer a "press fit" part; it kept falling out with the slightest pull. I suspect Toyota wanted to make sure that dust deflectors, as installed, have the capacity to remain in place while the front wheel rolls on into the future over many a bumpy road.

As to the snap ring, there is perhaps a similar rationale. It is installed to retain the bearing from moving inward from its pressed fit seat. But, that's all I know for certain. If a snap ring were to come loose from being too tightly squeezed (deformed) during bearing replacement, I find it hard to imagine what damage that could cause. Could such a tightly pressed part as a wheel bearing be caused to move inward along the hub spindle? And what damage could that movement cause? After all, it is just one press fit that keeps the hub, and therefore the tire on the car. If there was no snap ring, the tire would be held on by two press fits, and maybe that's the problem, but who knows for sure? And who knows why the front axle hub assembly was designed the way it was? But all of these parts, as an assembly, form a major element of a driver's safety. A loose snap ring might also move away from the bearing and somehow mess up the oil seal? Hey, it's hard to know all the reasons behind what Toyota says in its manuals are legit. But for DIY people, its all we've got.

Thanks for providing the image and illustration along with your question. They help a lot. I recently bought two of the same Timken front wheel bearings so I could change out what I thought were 20 year old bearings in my 1994 Celica.

Like you, in the beginning I knew little about how bearings worked, what races were and how all those parts functioned together. Turned out it was true that the two races were both part of the bearings I bought.

Adding to my confusion, the FSM for my Celica has an almost identical illustration as the one you provided that shows two INNER RACES making up the assembled wheel bearings I purchased. Your illustration shows an "4. Hub bearing inner race" and an "9. Hub bearing outer race." I don't think both your posted illustration and my FSM illustration could be correct, but which one is incorrect? This goes along with my belief that the terminology used in discussing bearings is a little obscure to those outside the field.

I have a thought arguing for the use of INNER RACE twice in the shop manual drawing. Think of the bearing as it is constructed, and think of it as two concentric circular-like basic parts, and you are looking at it END ON, rather than as shown on those exploded parts drawings. What you see then is an inner race inside an outer race. Here there are actually two inner races (but you only see one when looking on end), and the outer race turns out to be double wide. The inner and outer races form two distinct raceways, one on each side of middle of the bearing length, with their highly polished inside surfaces. Between the 'inner" and "outer" races are two assembles of ball bearings, where all balls are contained, maintained, loosely in evenly spaced holes formed in round cages made of what looks like plastic, and the ball bearing/cage assemblies simply rotate inside their contained space (the raceways). As the assemblies are rotating, the bearings are rolling.

Of course, all of these parts are solidly packed with special wheel bearing grease, so when you look at the bearing end on, you simply see two circular metal pieces, one inside the other, and the two pieces are separated by a blackish something or other (the grease).

In another comment in this thread, I tried to explain why Toyota considers that the snap ring and dust deflector are NON-REUSABLE parts, meaning that you need to buy new ones, along with the bearing and inner and outer seals whenever replacing a front wheel bearing.

This post has been edited by Langing: Jun 23, 2014 - 10:17 AM

Now I have gone through the process (unsatisfactorily, but that's another story) and know more about when (the order in which) the oil seals should be put in place.

You must install the outer oil seal prior to installation of the front axle hub. So, that undocumented step should appear between steps 2 and 3 of the FRONT AXLE HUB ASSEMBLY procedure (SA-17 of the BGB). It also answers my question about whether installation of the hub could damage the oil seal. The answer is that it doesn't matter because you physically cannot install the hub before installing the seal, period. Maybe, you just need to be careful when inserting the spindle of the hub?

You must install the inner oil seal prior to installation of the dust deflector. So, that undocumented step should appear just before step 5 of the FRONT AXLE HUB ASSEMBLY procedure. Installation of the hub, since it is done earlier, cannot effect the inner oil seal and thus cannot do it any damage.

As explained in another comment in this thread, I tried to re-use the dust deflector and proved to myself that Toyota was correct in designating that part as NON-REUSABLE.

Another dumb mistake we made when I did mine was we started to press the new bearing in and then realized we had not put the rotor dust cover back in place...
And you can't pull the bearing back out once you've started pushing it in. So we made a cut on the rotor dust cover and squeezed it back around the hub and bolted it into place.
Now ijust have to bend the rotor cover back into place once Ina while so it doesn't rub. /shrug.

Now I can ask my urgent question:

When I finished pressing the wheel bearing back in place and installed the snap ring, both oil seals, the lower ball joint, the dust cover, everything, I tried turning the hub by hand.

TROUBLE. . . I could hear and feel that something was wrong with the new bearing. It made a slight but rough sound as it rotated, and I could actually feel a vibration in the steering knuckle where I held on to it while turning the hub. Now, considering that I had trashed the bearing, I have it taken back apart, except for pressing out the outer race. I have another bearing set which I was going to use on the other front that I will use on this side, but don't want to do it again and get the same results, so. . .

WHAT MESSED UP THE BEARING; WHAT DID I DO WRONG; HOW WAS THE BEARING AFFECTED SUCH THAT IT WAS VIBRATING?


BTW: I used a Harbor Freight front wheel bearing tool set to press in the bearing and hub. I used an adapter that caught the just outer race of the bearing when pressing it into place. But, for pressing the bearing onto the hub I used a flat adapter against the pulled side of the bearing, such that it might catch both the inner race and outer race at the same time. I'm thinking this is the problem but need verification by someone telling me EXACTLY what I've done to the bearings to make a perfectly good new bearing immediately bad.

Here is a photo of the inside of the steering knuckle showing the newly pressed bearing and its snap ring locking it in place.



Notice that the two inner races have begun to come apart. The bearing came with a plastic insert which I took out as soon as possible. Perhaps that was used to keep the two races together until they were pressed onto the hub spindle?

Also, from looking at this photo, now I am guessing that the flat adapter must have been forcing against the snap ring as well as the inside race of the bearing when pushing it onto the hub spindle.

I also messed up the inner oil seal by banging on it too hard, and by using a punch where I thought it wasn't set deep enough.

THAT'S A SECOND QUESTION: How far into the bore does the outer seal go, and is there an open space left between the bearing and seal.

\When putting in the inner oil seal, I began using an adapter that caught the ring of the seal and tapped it into the bore. I couldn't seem to get the seal seated far enough down into the bore such that it provided a 'seal' over the bearing. That is to say, there was space left open between the seal and bearing, space into which I imagined I should be pushing a wheel bearing grease to fill it up. That's why I began using a punch on the metal of the seal (that's a no-no, from reading about seal installations). It got so bad that when I was almost down to where the seal would make closure with the bearing, I could see that I had damaged the seal in such a way that the little weird spring-ring (See photo) part that is inside the seal had come off and was pushed down into the bearing area. Here is the photo:

My 1994 service manual has a procedure for installing a new wheel bearing. It's called the FRONT AXLE HUB ASSEMBLY procedure (SA-17).

This procedure begins after STEERING KNUCKLE WITH AXLE HUB REMOVAL procedure (SA-13) and the FRONT AXLE HUB DISASSEMBLY procedure (SA-15), and goes like this:

Step 1: INSTALL NEW BEARING (bearing and snap ring)
Step 2: INSTALL DUST COVER (using a torx wrench attach it with four torx bolts)
Step 2a: INSTALL OUTER OIL SEAL (undocumented)
Step 3: INSTALL FRONT AXLE HUB
Step 4: INSTALL LOWER BALL JOINT
Step 4a: INSTALL INNER OIL SEAL (undocumented)
Step 5: INSTALL NEW DUST DEFLECTOR

That makes me think you had pressed in the bearing and then jumped over INSTALL DUST COVER to Step 3, where you were pressing the hub into the bearing when you realized you hadn't put on the dust cover? If so, you needlessly damaged your dust cover because you could have easily banged out the hub using a large diameter socket, put on the dust cover, and then re-pressed the hub. Yeah, it is hard to remove a bearing that is in the process of being pressed in, but not impossible.