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Over time, your wheel bearings will wear, and eventually need replacing. Road racing your car will accelerate this process, and it's not unusual to have to replace them pretty regularly. For the 4th generation f-body, the bearings, ABS sensor, and wheel hub are a single part, so you just buy a whole new hub if any go bad. The replacement is a piece of cake, as a result.
One little trick that caught me. On the above picture, the hub on the right is a replacement hub (Chicago Rawhide brand, from Pep Boys with lifetime guarantee :-) for LT1 f-body, which matches the original AC Delco OEM hub. The one on the left is the new version of the AC Delco hub, now the stock replacement part for '93-current f-body. Chicago Rawhide is also converting to this new style. In a stock spindle, either will fit. But since I have the aftermarket Baer Track brake system, my spindle setup has been modified (that gold bracket you see in the pictures is a Baer piece, not something a stock setup would have), the new Delco part will not fit on the car unless you get new brackets from Baer. The abs connector at the rear doesn't fit anymore.
Installation
Actually, before you even start, how do you know the hub needs to be replaced in the first place? If you jack the wheel off the ground, you want to see if it wobbles when you shake it. Put one hand at 12:00 o'clock, one at 6:00 o'clock, and try to shake the wheel in and out, rocking from top to bottom. If it wiggles at all in this direction, it's time to replace the hub.
So you know you need to do it now - it's all pretty easy. Jack the car up and remove the wheel. Remove the two bolts holding on your caliper, and use a string, wire or coat hanger to hold it up out of the way without stretching the brake line. Remove the brake rotor, and there you are, staring at the hub.
Disconnect the ABS connector from the rear of the hub. Remove the four bolts holding the hub in place from the rear.
I painted the hub black, to help prevent rust...
Pop in the new hub, and torque the four bolts down to 63 ft-lbs, with loc-tite on them. Re-connect the ABS connector, replace the rotor and caliper (73 ft-lbs), and you're done!
Conclusions
No particular conclusions here. If your wheel doesn't fall off, you did it right.
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Copyright © 1997-2004 David Mills, no part of this site (http://www.go-fast.org/) may be reproduced without permission of the author. The author makes no claims or guarantees as to the quality of the information on this site. I'm an enthusiast just like you, and while everything here is correct as I know it, I'm not responsible if your car breaks. |