Last week, I decided to help my old Neighbor out with his kid's 2002 Gen3 that had a wheel bearing go bad.

I have to say I absolutely HATE the new design. In theory the fixed bearing/hub assembly would be easier to replace with just unbolting 4 bolts and replacing the hub but it is NOT like it was when I did my Honda accord (from the rust belt) a while back.

Not only did the thing not want to come out with a sledge hammer (the bearing races were breaking!!) I have to say the process to remove the spindle was not friendly even though the truck is rust free southern car.





With a hand held sledge hammer I could not get that thing out and I LOVE beating on stuff. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> In the end, I ended up having him take it to the body shop that he's friendly with and they had to put it in a giant press that made a sound loud enough to think the spindle broke when the hub let go from the spindle.

Anyway - I don't know if this is a normal occurrence considering there was very minimal rust, and it was just likely that the metal warped from heat from teh bad bearing... but this is not something I would want to be doing more than once without having a large enough press nearby to accommodate.

I much much prefer the early generation design having done it so much and never had any more trouble than rounded off bearing retainer screws.

The only silver lining is that the thing went back together in about 30 minutes!