kingfishgrapejam

Anyone have a trick out there to change a wheel bearing w/o pulling the spindle??

Kris Hansen

Baum has one for $450 or so...

<img src="http://www.baumtools.com/products/b90.gif">

Or just pay the hour or so of labor.. You would have to do a hell of a lot of bearings to justify buying that tool (even I would, and I have a lot of special tools..)

Audi4orce

or go to Pep Boys and rent the tool for free......

Kris Hansen

Pep Boys has on the car wheel bearing tools???

kingfishgrapejam

All the dealers i checked want 3 or 4 hours. Incidentally, I did it myself in 3 hours w/o a lift

Kris Hansen

My shop takes an hour to do it with the hub shark..

kingfishgrapejam

I used a pitman/tie rod end puller from Autozone's lend a tool program to get most of the links off. The lower rear control arm was the hardest but if you take the uppers and the tie rod end out and then remove the CV from the hub you can get a socket on the bolt and it is pretty straight forward from there. Also don't worry about removing the rotor and brake dust guard. It's an unnecessary PITA. Car rolls quiet and the alignment doesn't seem affected at all. I need to get it aligned anyway but I will probably wait until the other side goes. A Lincoln dealer took me for $600 when all I needed was a $12 fuel filter once. Since then if there is any chance that I can fix it on my own, I do. I'd rather spend the money on tools and bandaids than pay a $80 an hour service tech that has no more skills than the average guy.

Kris Hansen

make much easier. Here is a prime example. I had a rear bearing changed on my wife's '96. The shop took an hour, @ $50 per hour, and 80 for the bearing. If I did it, it would have cost 65 for the bearing, but I would have spend all day taking the car apart. Here is the kicker - the new bearing was bad, and it made a clicking noise. I took it back to the shop and they warranteed the bearing and labor. If I had done it, I would have only spent 80 bucks or so, but I would have been out many many hours of my own time.

I think the biggest difference is that I only go to a shop that I trust, and they are really good to me. I buy most of my parts there, and any labor that I can have them do I bring it there.

Never go to a DEALER unless you are under warrantee. Dealers don't care if it takes 6 hours for a 1 hour job, becasuse they know that the factroy will usually pay out when it's warrantee work.

Of course, YMMV. Also, I would look REALLY close at the dust boots on your control arms ( using a pitman arm tool aka pickle fork on them would seem like a bad idea to me on a joint that you would want to re use and one that is sealed.)

kingfishgrapejam

where you are coming from with the fork issue and I try to avoid using them at all costs. I do not have any shop out here that I would trust. Most of them have no experience on Audi's or anything that isn't a pickup or end with "vrolet". The one garage that I did trust still wanted $200 labor and they couldn't get to the car for a week. I'm not saying that I would take on rebuilding a valvetrain or any thing but most problems on these cars are pretty much bolts and nuts types of things and I just wanted to point that out as some may be fooled into paying big money when a couple hours and some decent problem solving skills are all that is needed.

Anyway, if I could have got away with $50 in labor I would have gone that route.

Thanks for all of your input, I'm sure I'll be needing some advice again.